Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The power of three will set us free

The Women of Wild Hill by Kirsten Miller

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While I didn’t rate The Change as 5 stars (there were some pacing issues in the middle), I quite enjoyed it and have been thinking back to it quite a bit since reading it last December (even more so in the last few months given certain political topics). As a result, I was looking forward to Kirsten Miller’s new release, The Women of Wild Hill. As a general reaction, there were quite a few things I liked better about this novel and that I think […]

We’re all just animals after all

Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

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Bingo Square: Rec’d (Colormeloverly raved about this novel repeatedly last year on IG) Definitely not my usual kind of novel nowadays – I don’t venture into literary fiction all too often anymore but if they were all like this, I might. Shortly after their wedding, Lewis notices some odd changes in his body, and after consultation, he is diagnosed with an animal mutation: he is transforming into a great white shark, and has less than a year before his transformation will be complete and he […]

Let’s Try This Again

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

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When I was in high school, being a “college track” kid, we had a choice of only one fine arts elective.  For me, it would always be music, never art.  And when I got to college, art was the one elective I could never take, because the textbooks were just so damn expensive.  So even though, I love a good museum, and am willing to examine just about anything that hangs on the walls (looking at you Frank Stella with your solid black canvas – […]

The Winter of Our Discontent

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

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In Bliss Montage, a woman and her family live in the same house as her one hundred ex-boyfriends, women trapped in a toxic friendship take a drug that makes themselves invisible, and a pregnant woman must caretake the protruding arm of her fetus as she awaits giving birth to the rest of it. The distance from everyday life that fantasy brings us can be used to magnify reality, and Ling Ma takes takes ample advantage of this in Bliss Montage, a short story collection that examines […]

Sticky Icky

The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran

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Read this as part of CBR15Bingo: sex-banned. This book is about the pursuit of a centuries old erotic text that is said to give its participants magic powers if they follow the rules. It’s also “banned” in some places…the titular book, not this actual book. Although, given its content, I wouldn’t be surprised if it made the list sooner than later.  This is one of those books where I wonder if the author being a favorite makes me too biased to judge it accurately. There […]

“Even the afterlife is designed to keep the masses stupid.”

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

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Bingo: Asia/Oceania; Passport: Sri Lanka Maali Almeida is dead.  He can’t remember exactly what happened, and it takes a while for the reality of his situation to sink in.  Death is confusing, a bureaucratic maze with rules that everyone seems to expect him to already know, and forms that must be filled in before his seven days are up and he must choose what happens next. Maali desperately wants to know how he died.  He can follow his body through the ghost-ridden streets of Colombo […]



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