Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The fact that they have families and parents . . . is why they shouldn’t do these things, not why we should forgive them.” #CBRBINGO – Uncannon

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

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I have had terrible luck with lit-fic so far this year, so it’s nice that my streak is finally broken. This book was great. Depressing, but great. And I never would have picked it up on my own except that it qualified nicely for the novel in translation category (non-European) for the Read Harder Challenge, and it was short! And very well regarded. So thanks, Read Harder! Doing your job. Kim Jiyoung is a young mother living in Korea. She quit her job in marketing […]

“I’m not joking, but we still laugh because laughter is the best way to cover pain.”

Broken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson

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If you’ve read a Jenny Lawson book before, you’ll know what to expect here. Side-splitting anecdotes, social anxiety, lots of animal stories, bizarre arguments with her husband Victor, talking openly about mental health issues like depression, etc. (She has treatment resistant depression and doesn’t shy away from talking about her lowest moments, including feeling suicidal.) And yet this book feels light and very human. Some notable departures in this one, she spends quite a bit of time reflecting on the differences between her and Victor’s […]

“Friday was back to normal, if the actions of suspicious would-be heirs competing for a two-hundred-million-dollar prize could be considered normal.”

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

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This was so good! I’m so mad I didn’t read it as a kid. I mean, I’m an adult reading this for the first time, and even though I’m notoriously bad at figuring out mysteries, this was still quite the puzzle. It was just as well-constructed as an adult mystery, just with a different tone. And a main character called Turtle. What I liked best about this, besides the puzzle-like nature of it, was the human kindness it had at its core. It’s been since […]

An excellent anthology of disabled authors from a variety of perspectives.

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century by ed. Alice Wong

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This was a solid collection of essays from voices rarely heard in publishing, or elsewhere. Ableism is baked into our culture. I read this for Read Harder this year, and this is why I like participating in that challenge every year, because there are always a couple books I probably would never have read otherwise, and this is one of those. Like most essay collections, there are essays that are stronger than others. The standouts for me were the very first essay by Harriet McBryde […]

My 2,000th Review!

The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #2) by Seth Dickinson

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I should say, it’s my 2,000th review written, not posted, since I started reviewing books in 2008. This one’s been holding me up. Baru Cormorant is one of those series where you really have to be in the right mood. And you have to make sure to take the time to let the story breathe. At least for me, this isn’t a book you can just read straight through in a matter of days, or even in a week. It’s too raw and stressful and […]

“Nobody thought of it as history, herstory, my-story, your-story, or our-story. We were being denied a place to dance together. That’s all. The total charisma of a revolution in our CONSCIOUSNESS rising from the gutter to the gut to the heart and the mind was here. Non-existence (or part existence) was coming into being, and being into becoming. Our Mother Stonewall was giving birth to a new era and we were the midwives.”

The Stonewall Reader by The New York Public Library

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This is a book that has immense historical value, but I had a very hard time paying attention to it. Partly, this is due to my own expectations, and partly due to the format. I was expecting a book mostly about the actual events of Stonewall itself, first of all. That’s not really what this is. Only about a third of it focuses on the actual riots, the middle section. The first section focuses on pre-Stonewall writings by queer authors, and the final third does […]



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