Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The perimenopause book”

All Fours by Miranda July

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CBR17Bingo – “Review” – because of the many and varying reviews I found of this book, which encouraged me to read it. I first heard of All Fours (2024) by Miranda July when my husband began reading it. In hindsight, it might be a little bit surprising that my husband started reading “the perimenopause” book before I’d even heard of it, but he’s always getting recommended new books by various online sources. Although he gave up on it about one third of the way through, I kept […]

I was hoping to be able to relate to this book, and holy hell, I could not

All Fours by Miranda July

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CBR 17 BINGO: Borrow (I borrowed this book from a friend who read it for her book club) As a woman who feels like she’s been stuck in perimenopause hell forever, my ears perk up when I hear about works that touch on this topic. So when my friend mentioned that All Fours centers on a woman in her mid-forties who is experiencing some of these challenges, I asked to borrow it. I had seen a couple of reviews here on CBR, so I knew […]

Hook, Line and Thinker

All Fours by Miranda July

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If you’ve been traipsing around the ‘new book recommendations’ corners of the internet that I frequent, you’ve likely already read the (very effective) hook for July’s latest novel: “A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.” It certainly was effective on me, and I dived into this novel with reckless abandon. It’s […]

Raise the Red Flag

All Fours by Miranda July

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For years I’ve been perturbed by a certain segment of BookTok and other literary-based social media which is preoccupied with so-called “red flag” books. These are usually novels like Infinite Jest or Catcher in the Rye. Any man who proclaims a red flag book as his favorite is to be avoided, apparently. While I take the point that many a young man has taken the wrong lessons from a work of fiction, I tend to think that these books can be and often are admired […]

Started with my Curiosity, but Somewhere Got Lost Along the Way

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

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Since I’ve been slacking on my reading time so far this year, but sometimes listen to podcasts while I work on art and design projects, my friend suggested I listen to audiobooks to keep with my book goals. And so here we are! Shout-out to the library for having a great digital collection that I can access with a few different apps. Miranda July is a bit of a pickle for me: some of her works I love (ie, Me and You and Everyone We […]

More like The WORST Bad Man, amiright! I’ll see myself out.

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According to the Internet, I’m the odd person out when it comes to Miranda July’s The First Bad Man. I scanned reviews that called it “heartbreaking” “brilliant” and one of “the best books of the year.” I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. Because I hated this book. HATED this book. For me at least, The First Bad Man is some twee hipster nonsense masquerading as something deep that like says stuff man, about our society. It’s too outrageous to be […]



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