Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Books were a dirty job, one of the black arts, along with witchcraft and printing.”

The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran

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This was a fascinating read! I can see why it comes so highly recommended by people whose opinions on books I trust. This is also a genremash book, with a little bit of lot of stuff thrown in, and done very well. We’ve got horror, fantasy (on the dark end), literary fiction, and a bit of a mystery plot as well. I will not be talking hugely about the plot, because watching it unfold is too fun to spoil, but this starts off about a […]

The slow horror of watching your life fall apart, one terrible decision after another

Come Closer by Sara Gran

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I had low expectations going into this book, but I was in the mood for something quietly horrifying and unsettling. I saw someone praising this on Reddit, and it was freely available on Audible. And it was exactly what I wanted. Which is to say, it left me deeply unsettled. Amanda, an architect in what appears to be a happy marriage, finds her life slowly unraveling. It starts off with  a quiet tapping in her apartment that she and her husband can quite track down. […]

Horror Month 2023: #8 and #9

Reptile Memoirs by Silje Ulstein

Come Closer by Sara Gran

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I meant to review every book of Horror Month separately but I happened to consecutively read these two and they both feature women going through…transformations. So I figured it made sense to talk about them both on one page. Reptile Memoirs**** This is billed as a horror mystery but aside from a woman’s weird psychosomatic fascination with a snake, there’s not much in the way of horror, if that even qualifies as horror. That’s okay though; this is an interesting enough mystery tale with shifting […]

Sticky Icky

The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran

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Read this as part of CBR15Bingo: sex-banned. This book is about the pursuit of a centuries old erotic text that is said to give its participants magic powers if they follow the rules. It’s also “banned” in some places…the titular book, not this actual book. Although, given its content, I wouldn’t be surprised if it made the list sooner than later.  This is one of those books where I wonder if the author being a favorite makes me too biased to judge it accurately. There […]

The Book I Needed Right Now

The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran

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I really needed this book right now. I tried for almost a decade to get into the Claire DeWitt series. I thought the idea of a transgressive detective traipsing around the country solving crimes while spitting wry dialogue would be fun. But I felt like Sara Gran laced her books with too many acerbic observations and dead end philosophies; which inevitably messed with the flow of the book. But as Stevie Nicks would say: Time makes bolder children grow older. My 20s became my 30s. Stuff happened. […]

The Last Month in Reading

The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher

Devolution by Max Brooks

The Return by Rachel Harrison

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran

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I finished my last semester of college! I graduate on Wednesday! Yay!!! The last month has been completely filled with work and wrapping up assignments, so I haven’t read anything in the month of May. But I’ve got a few reviews from April that I never got around to posting, so here’s a dump filled with some great reads. Looking forward to having the summer to read! I think I said in a comment on my very first review for CBR (of The Hollow Places […]



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