Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When you alter yourself, the alterations become the truth…

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

by 1 Comment

It’s hard to track the career of Margaret Atwood. She gets pinned down sometimes as a sci-fi writer, and fairly so, because of The Handmaid’s Tale and the Oryx and Crake/MadAddam trilogy. But I often forget just how good she is at strange, off-center novels that talk about contemporary life. This is a tale modeled after the fairy tale, The Robber Bridegroom, about a thief who lures young women to their doom in his forest lair. In this novel, we start with a funeral in which a group […]

The problem here is I don’t think I like short stories

by 7 Comments

This collection of short stories feels more like Atwood published her “idea journal” for public consumption. I read one review that suggested that, despite its short length, it may be better enjoyed in short spurts which  I did not consider until it was too late. In the few instances I found myself enjoying a story it would inevitably end a few sentences later, as is the nature of short stories. The longer poems were probably the most enjoyable because they felt the most complete as […]

Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown.

by 7 Comments

“Having long ago whispered I want to die, I now realize that this wish will indeed be fulfilled, and sooner rather than later. No matter that I’ve changed my mind about it.” Atwood, having once written the Handmaid’s tale can do no wrong in my eyes. I trust her to the end of the Earth and back. And much of this book, I’ll admit, had to be read on that trust. This is not a whirlpool of a book, nowhere does is suck you in, […]

Wicked Tales

by Leave a Comment

The cover of this book has a quote from a review in Independent that sums up these nine short stories better than I ever could: “If this collection can be said to have a clear uniting theme, it might be that by a certain stage of life we’ve all got at least one person we would really like to kill”. That’s…pretty much perfect. “What is a stromatolite? he asks rhetorically, his eyes gleaming. The word comes from the Greek stroma, a mattress, coupled with the root word […]

Learned all the wrong lessons from George RR Martin

by 8 Comments

This, the second book in the Night Angel trilogy, picks up where The Way of Shadows left off. If you haven’t read the first book, and don’t want spoilers, read no further. I loved the first book. I loved it to the point that my excitement to read the next book in the series, and my obsession with telling everyone about it, became so hyperbolic that I knew my feelings didn’t actually correspond to what I actually read. It was good, in other words, but […]

One of my top books of 2016

by Leave a Comment

Okay, real-talk. This and Homegoing are my top two contenders for Best Book of 2016, with Sofia Samatar’s The Winged Histories and Jewell Parker Rhodes’ Towers Falling in a close second, with John Lewis’s last March volume rounding out the top five. 2016 has been a crappy year, but there have been some remarkable books. Let’s talk about what made this so extraordinary. I explain why in my full review.



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo