Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I am forty four and I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

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When Sally catapults to national attention for putting her adoptive father’s body out with the trash, little does she know that this is not the first time she’s been in the headlines. I don’t read a lot of suspense, but after seeing this book all over my Goodreads feed the last couple of years I was sufficiently intrigued. That’s a pretty startling image to start off with, one’s father in the trash! Nugent creates a fascinating dual character study following Sally and Peter, and I […]

A Smudge on the Page of History

Better The Blood by Michael Bennett

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Sometimes you start reading a book and you know you’re in good hands.  That’s how I felt as I dove into Michael Bennett’s novel, Better the Blood.  Set in present-day Auckland, the story explores how past colonial trauma echoes on into future generations (a topic that seems timely in so many ways right now). Detective Senior Hana Westerman is on her way into a courtroom when someone sends an anonymous video to her phone.  It isn’t until later in the day (after the judge hands […]

Dwindle, Peak and Pine

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

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Birnam Wood are a collective of idealists. They roam around the New Zealand city in which they are based and grow vegetables on unused plots of lands, occasionally with permission of their owners. People volunteer bits of time and effort, driving around the city looking for mulch or abandoned pieces of plastic tarp to cover the plants, weeding the lots and collecting rainwater. Everything is recycled. Important events are democratically decided during a meeting known as a hui, in deference to the Maori, but ostensibly […]

No Reunions

There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh

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Especially do not attend any reunions that are in memory of a lost friend or are being held in New Zealand.  Between this book, Wellington Paranormal, and Taskmaster NZ I’m starting to be very suspicious of what’s happening on that island. Eight teenagers were the best of friends until everyone’s favorite, Bea, died. Over the next nine years the group has drifted apart but Bea’s sister Darcie has organized a reunion for them at her family’s creepy mansion out in the countryside. It should be […]

Doors Should Stay Closed

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

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This book messed with me in a real way. It left me feeling very sad. Impossible to say how without revealing the ending. But the whole book is…well it’s something. A woman whose trauma-informed behavior makes her not understand societal norms. The reader starts with that and slowly unpacks everything. Everything. I’m usually nervous when writers try to write neurodiverse characters. I liked Motherless Brooklyn the second time around but am not a huge fan of how Lethem wrote Lionel Essrog. I’ve never been able to get […]

Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”)

Poukahangatus: Poems by Tayi Tibble

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CBR15Passport, other country Tayi Tibble is a young woman from New Zealand. They are pretty, smart, serious, funny and did I mention young? She was born in 1995 (I have shoes older than her). Therefore, what does a not yet thirty-year-old know about life? Well, if Poukahangatus: Poems is any indication, a lot. The publisher description says she channels her Māori heritage and childhood, under what she calls “the red fog of memory.” I am not completely sure what she means, but I am going […]



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