Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran

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Unlike Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, I wasn’t able to down this one quickly like I thought I would. I had to sit with certain parts of it. It’s more personal and raw than the first one…and just as good, if not better. It’s tough to describe Gran’s writing style. It’s this mix of absurdism, postmodernism and hardboiled. Usually, people who write that way are trying way too hard. For Gran, it’s effortless. And it makes every dialogue exchange an adventure. Sometimes, I […]

Imagine learning to talk from recordings rather than people.

Because Internet by Gretchin McCulloch

To Marry Medusa by Theodore Sturgeon

Come Closer by Sara Gran

The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey by James Lecesne

Coming Out Party by Nikki Levy

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

An Act of God by David Javerbaum

Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler

Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

Henrietta and Eleanor by Libby Spurrier

Love that Dog by Sharon Creech

Hate that Cat by Sharon Creech

Break Shot by James Taylor

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Because Internet: 4/5 Stars A book whose title and public relations/previews made me really not want to read, this ended up being a) much different from what I thought it was going to be and b) a lot better as well. This is not an amateur at language in a way that may very well be accurate enough, but would also be facile or shallow. Instead, Gretchen McCulloch writes an interesting analysis of language for amateurs, but using the tools of her work as a […]

She’ll Take Manhattan

Dope by Sara Gran

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Dope is such a solid crime novel that it makes me want to immediately clear my TBR pile and read Sara Gran’s entire catalogue. The problem with that is I’ve tried to read Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead so many times and have never been able to get into it. I just can’t connect with the inner monologue of the titular character. Which sucks because it’s doubtless that Sara Gran is a talented writer. I picked this one up when I saw it on a […]

I might have been ten, eleven years old–I cannot say for certain–when my first master died. No one grieved him

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Washington Black – 4/5 Stars This novel just recently was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and by all rights, it should win. It also is possibly the front runner given that a Canadian author has not won in some time…possibly since Margaret Atwood for The Blind Assassin, but I’d have to check. It’s also quite simply the best book on the list that I’ve read and while I was worried it was going to be a little whimsical or odd, it’s actually nearly perfect. It’s […]

Maybe read this during the day…

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This is a sinister story that you can read in just a few hours. It’s about Amanda, who is happily married with a great job as an architect. As strange things begin happening to her, she can’t quite figure out if it’s her, or something else. Like the tapping she constantly hears at home (it’s the pipes), or the strange incident at work (must have been a practical joke). But as things get more sinister, Amanda finds herself consulting a book on demon possession she’s […]

A Little Book On Demon Possession

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Whew! This little book was a ride. Clocking in at only 190 pages, our story follows Amanda, an architect with a happy, boring life that she loves. She’s a young, married professional with a nice loft and an aspiring future until little things start happening…..hearing noises, a sudden desire to start smoking, unexplained purchases, an intense need to steal….but things still easily explained away, or so Amanda thinks. Gran’s delightfully minimal style weaves us through the mind of a woman unraveling. Told in the first […]



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