Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Less Well Known Works by Two of My Auto-Buy Authors

The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir

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Alix E. Harrow is one of my favorite authors, so as part of my quest to read just about everything she’s written, I dove into her short story The Six Deaths of the Saint. It was unexpected and intense and emotional, though it’s hard to share much without getting into spoiler territory. It also contains a mix of 1st and 2nd person perspective. The story starts with the Saint of War showing up to a poor, nameless orphan and the Saint helps her become a […]

Final 2024 Leftovers

1876 by Gore Vidal

Joe Country by Mick Herron

James by Percival Everett

Slough House by Mick Herron

Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie

The Contemplative Tarot: A Christian Introduction to the cards by Brittany Muller

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Hope everyone had a wonderful 2024. Remember that while we can’t control the horrors of the world, there is joy to be found in the presence of those we love. 1876**** Didn’t hit as hard as Burr; Burr’s presence was the center of the story that made it go, whereas this book wants to highlight every major player in the 1876 election. But Vidal does a good job of evoking the atmosphere of the time: the unapologetic corruption, the paranoia of another war and the […]

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

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CBR16 BINGO: Horses, because Gulliver spends several years with the Houyhnhnms, a highly rational race of talking horses Take a nice, English surgeon and send him around the world, where he encounters all sorts of heretofore unknown races, and eventually he’ll come back absolutely hating on humanity. Gulliver’s Travels is so ingrained in popular culture that everyone knows something about it. I can’t remember my first introduction to the story, but it was probably in the form of a children’s comic book or animated special. […]

“a human looking glass: the light cast by fame bounced off her, and back on to those facing her” CBRBINGO – Golden

Q: A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. I’m so glad I took a chance on this one and requested the ARC. It was so much fun! It avoided literally everything that usually makes me avoid reading biographies: the tedious linear structure, the grandiloquence and navel-gazing that comes with writing about a much-lauded (or controversial) figure (and the author trying to “earn it”), and to be honest, the dull bits. Q: A Voyage Around the Queen is not […]

Alchemy

Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis

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I’ve been enjoying the tv show Lodge 49. It’s a very low-stakes but entertaining show about a guy at a dead end in his life who joins a secret society and gets entangled in some things while learning about life. It’s more character-driven than I thought it would be and I think that’s why I’m connecting with it. At any rate, when looking up books to read for fans of the show, this was the top recommendation by far. I can see why. It can accurately […]

“I feel like this isn’t about me”

Yellowface (2023) by R. F. Kuang

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I don’t really know what I can say about this book, which I think means it’s worked? I can say that it’s blistering, and brilliant; I can say that it fits the ‘Fiasco‘ square because it’s about someone who “reached for the stars and utterly failed…a disaster created by human actions” and in this case the disaster is a person who finds herself in a nightmare of her own making, but the disaster is also the publishing industry and the surrounding discourse, and also the […]



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