Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To be homeless is to be ignored when people walk past while still being in full view of everyone.

Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

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“To speak is to stumble, to hesitate, to detour and hit dead ends. To listen is straightforward. You can always just listen.” ― Yū Miri, Tokyo Ueno Station CBR15Bingo: Asia & Oceania CBR15Passport: The story takes place in Japan. Based on the gold medals on the book cover, the charming cover art, and the synopsis of the book, I was expecting a quirky, sometimes weepy, ghost story set in one of my favorite places in the world. To put it simply, this book is bleak. […]

Angst!

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

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“It was funny, the Gray Man thought, how humorous she always appeared, how that smile was always just a moment away from her lips. You really didn’t see the sadness or the longing unless you already knew it was there. But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Everyone had their disappointment and their baggage; only, some people carried it in their inside pockets and not on their backs. And here was the other trick: Maura was not faking her happiness. She was both very happy […]

hide all you want, but nothing stays buried

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

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Jeanie and Julius have spent their entire lives together. Over half a century of life together has passed, and they have never spent an entire night separate from each other. Jeanie tends the garden with their mother, Dot, and Julius works odd jobs in the village. Jeanie, Julius, and Dot depend fiercely on one another. They accept nothing from the outside world- at least, Jeanie and Julius spent the last 51 years believing that they were accepting nothing and indebted to no one but each […]

“She wondered, for the thousandth time, who got to decide one tradition was right and another was wrong.”

The Butchers' Blessing by Ruth Gilligan

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What makes a tradition a tradition? How and when do we pass from routine to ritual, and ritual to sacred rite? How do we decide what it kept, what is left behind, and what must be destroyed for the good of the future? Ruth Gilligan knows, but she will not give us any easy answers. Instead, she gives us snapshots; a literal photograph  sets us in motion, but glimpses into the life of “modern Ireland” connect the pieces by stringing one red knot to another. […]

I have never read anything as bleak or upsetting

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

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[TRIGGER WARNING: Violence, sexual violence, animal abuse] I have written and rewritten a summary of the plot of this book, and I end up in one of two camps: either I have written nothing substantial that would be worth keeping or I have written 4-5 paragraphs to explain everything. Author Donald Ray Pollock has created stories that weave and connect back on each in such incredible ways that it is difficult to summarize. I’ve decided on the insubstantial camp. The book tells the story of […]

“Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation – the crime being a lack of means to survive.”

Maid by Stephanie Land

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This was good, but I’m not going to shout to the rooftops over it. I can’t say I was really disappointed by expectations on this one, because I didn’t have any. It was only until about halfway through that I found myself wishing the book was something else, and that’s not the author’s fault. The cover and blurb are sort of misleading. This isn’t a book about what it’s like to be a maid, with hard-hitting social criticism or research. It’s a straight-up memoir about […]



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