Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Scooby-Dooby-Cthulhu

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

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Thirteen years ago, a scrappy pack of teen detectives (and their faithful dog) solved a lake-monster mystery in a sleepy northwestern town. The guy in the monster suit would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids! Smash-cut to thirteen years later, and our teens are far from thriving members of society. Plagued by nightmares and hallucinations, powered by alcohol and violence, the twenty-something remnants of the Blyton Hills Detective Club are coming to a powerful realization: they caught the […]

Kind of wondering what Queenie would think of current events?

Queenie by Candace Carty-Williams

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Official book description: Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle-class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to […]

The Mozart Effect Effect!

Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

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Not a typo! You are probably familiar with the Mozart Effect, but have you heard about the Mozart Effect Effect?! We’ve all heard the story: listening to Mozart makes you smarter! You will test better! Your babies will be brilliant! You will smash the SATS! Listening to Mozart every day will give you a leg up above all of the others! My mother was definitely a proponent of this adventure; “if you can play classical music, then how come you can’t do well in math! Mozart […]

Part history of mental health, part investigation into an infamous mental health study.

The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

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When I read Brain on Fire, Susannah Cahalan’s memoir about her experience with psychosis, I became a little obsessed with it. (The Netflix adaptation was disappointing, as the clever hook in the book was her investigating her own illness from an outside perspective, something she could do as she lost most of her memory from when she was sick. The film just follows it straight. But that’s a digression.) Brain on Fire is an extremely readable memoir about a very scary and rare thing that […]

Social Media: “They’re Using Our Pain For Their Gain!”

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

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This book changed my life for the better, so I want to spread the love and do recommend that people at least consider listening to the short audiobook version of (around 5 hours). Consider whether your life is better or worse with the presence of social media as-is. The decision is up to you, of course, as the author makes clear from the get-go. The author (or me) telling you what do is no better than social media giants manipulating you for their own gain […]

If you haven’t caused a scene in a psych unit, it’s just because you haven’t been inside long enough.

The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle

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The titular devil in LaValle’s The Devil in Silver comes in many forms. Its most obvious is the monster that roams the halls of the New Hyde psychiatric ward at night, attacking patients who leave their doors unlocked. When Pepper is committed against his will after committing a crime he doesn’t fully remember, he quickly comes face to face with this evil. Along with some of his companions on the ward, he sets out to solve the mystery of this hushed up resident of the […]



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