Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Future Worth Living For

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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What a delightfully pleasant read. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig, offers a story filled with possibility, opportunity, and even a bit of hope. The book begins with Nora Seed, underwhelmed with her disappointing life, deciding to end it all with a handful of pills. It isn’t so much that her life has become too much to handle, but the excitement has dimmed. Life has become meaningless and the only way out is the Midnight Library. Although Nora doesn’t know it yet. As it turns […]

The only way to learn is to live.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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The barrage of fake perfection on social media these days can easily toss a big old regret salad and serve it up. The rabbit hole of “friends,” spotless kitchens, fancy sounding job titles and instagram-able artisanal birthday parties for toddlers is bottomless. I think everyone wonders, from time to time, how their life would have turned out if they had taken a different fork in the road. Would that job, relationship, or overseas trip fundamentally change everything? Nora Sneed is done with living. Thinking, at […]

Not stopped, just slow.

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

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Yet again I am sucked into buying a book because of its cover. But look at it, it’s so pretty! And the back cover has a blurb from Neil Gaiman! I love Gaiman so much that I don’t even mind knockoff Gaiman, so I was hopeful this would be a nice little sci-fi jaunt with the gothic twists he’s expert at. For someone who loves book covers so much, I sure don’t read the actual relevant information on them. This isn’t about time travel (well, […]

“The first rule is don’t fall in love”…. guess what happens??

How To Stop Time by Matt Haig

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I picked this up this afternoon as a cozy read during a snow day where work is cancelled and everyone is snowed in.   How To Stop Time is about Tom, a man who had a medical condition that causes him to age incredibly slowly. He’s not immortal, this isn’t played off as sci-fi or fantasy. He will eventually age and die, but in the meantime he is 439 years old and appears to be 41. The story takes us back and forth between present […]

Though I Look Right at Home I Still Feel Like an Exile

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Years before he took on the role of Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was in a short-lived FOX show called New Amsterdam.  It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either; Coster-Waldau was easy on the eye and the show raised some interesting questions about the burdens of outliving those around you again and again.  I had almost forgotten about that series until I started to read Matt Haig’s novel, How To Stop Time. The main character, Tom Hazard, is not immortal, but […]

I will solve you.

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This is a melancholy little book about what it means to live almost forever. Think “Interview with a Vampire” without vampires.  Tom Hazard, a man of many names and times, is over 400 years old.  Tom is not immortal but ages VERY slowly. The explanation for this is some kind of genetic thing that kicks in at puberty, physically aging those with the gene around 10 years for every 100. The obvious things occur here: watching loved ones age and die, constantly moving and changing identities initially to avoid superstitious village […]



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