Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I’m as bad as the fool: filling up greedily, wanting more, loving it but not feeling satisfied

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

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It’s been difficult for me to write about Redemption in Indigo. Karen Lord’s novel feels familiar and good in so many ways. It reminds me of the kinds of fairy tales and fables we’re told as children of normal but brave lives interrupted by magic, gods or other mystical beings hidden in sight, and important lessons drawn from their exchanges. But this familiarity, which is partially drawn from the brevity of the tale, was also a draw back for me. I wanted even more from […]

Were I to Pull Every Line that Made Me Gasp I Would be Quoting the Book in its Entirety

The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt

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I’d lick my lips, slowly, letting my pink tongue dangle out of my black mouth a little just like some animal waiting by the side of the road for the driver who killed it to come back one more time and kill it again This collection is stitched together with muscle, sinew, and blood. Samantha Hunt writes in a way that tears apart beautiful language and forces you to read the story through twisted entrails like a time-forgotten seer. The tales are modern in theme […]

A light and fun read to round out the year

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

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As I was looking for the last reads of my completed cannonball, only one more to go after this one (!!!) I wanted something light and fun to enjoy through the holiday season and I was positively delighted to discover I had this unread Sarah Addison Allen delight on my bookshelf. I discovered her early in her career and managed to go to a book event when I was living in Tennessee where I was the last attendee and remember being completely tongue-tied about it […]

Once I finished, I immediately wanted to read it again.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

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A short and to the point review, for a couple reasons. One, it’s the end of the year, and thus time for a flurry of review posting. I don’t have time for in depth. And two, more importantly, after finishing this book, I felt the need to sit down with someone and have them take me by the hand and explain the book to me bit by bit.  I’m giving this the good old five stars because of how enthralled I was while reading it. […]

Sugar, Spice, and Things that go Bump in the Night

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

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Helen Oyeyemi is an expert in pulling back the cobwebs from the old trunk in the attic, shaking out the goods within, and daring you to take a good strong look. She weaves familiar fairly tales with Yoruba folktales, inter-generational family strife, and good old fashioned 21st century anxiety. In her most recent novel, Gingerbread, she leaves spicy breadcrumbs of Hansel and Gretel, the Gingerbread Man, and many other traditional tales. I was also strongly reminded of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Orsinian Tales. Oyeyemi’s characters present […]

Dear Diary; nature has gone haywire

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

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A young Native American woman learns that she is pregnant in a time of miracles and disaster; nature has gone haywire. Evolution has sped up, gone sideways, and/or stopped all together. Times are trying. It is a particularly frightening time to be a single person with an unplanned pregnancy- especially when religious-esque government agents are collecting and imprisoning pregnant women. Our narrator, Cedar, gives us her story through the pages of her diary. She is keeping accounts of her body and the world around her […]



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