Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I fell in love with you the day that I met you, and then I fell in love with the person you remembered you are. I got to fall in love with you twice.”

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

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CBR13 Bingo: they/he/she (the author is non-binary and bisexual (and uses any pronouns) and the book features pretty much all iterations of the queer spectrum, I’m not sure there is a straight character of any significance in the whole book) Official book description: Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn’t believe in much. She doesn’t believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn’t believe her ragtag band of new roommates, her night shifts at […]

This is about the woman and the house that had never been—until one day, they were undeniably there.

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova

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When Orquidea Divina dies, she leaves behind questions, mysteries and a fractured, resentful family. She leaves behind magic, silence, solitude, debts and an enemy. The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers—even for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the […]

In which I finally rectify having never read an American master of writing

Beloved by Toni Morrison

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[TW: violence against children, racial slurs, depictions of slavery, abuse] BINGO – UnCannon In high school I took two AP English classes. In college, I took a Comparative Western Literature course. Toni Morrison was not on any of my reading lists for those courses despite the fact that Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and that Beloved was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. Perhaps, Morrison is not read more at […]

meddling with merfolk

Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet

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“One thing. I’ve got experience with explosives. Another thing. I’ve got explosives.” I do not know why this book has such a low rating on GR – 2.8 as of the time of this posting – as it’s a fluffy little environmental thriller, but I suppose you can’t make everyone happy! Not that there is too much in Mermaids in Paradise to be happy with, what with the incredibly privileged narrator and her cavalcade of side characters who oscillate wildly between do-gooders and backstabbers. Mermaids in Paradise – […]

My high hopes for horror were halted

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

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I read another one of Enriquez’s collections of short stories, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, earlier this year. I loved that collection so much. In my review, I called it the ‘most effective collection of short stories I [had] ever read’ and a ‘knockout’. I figured that Things We Lost in the Fire would be similar. Unfortunately that is not the case. In Things We Lost in the Fire, we have the same elements in each short story present in the collection of short stories in The Dangers […]

“The world is a dangerous place, full of people who don’t trust each other. This is why I am staying up in this tree.”

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

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Stranger Things Happen is Kelly Link’s first collection of short fiction, but- PLOT TWIST: it was the only book of hers that I had yet to read. Oops! I suppose….stranger things HAVE happened. Link writes like the  girl in the back of homeroom who is weird, yes, but also cool and intimidating. She’s probably wearing black and writing allover her arms with a ballpoint pen. She knows a lot and she is not afraid to drop reference after reference and allusion after allusion- she doesn’t care […]



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