Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom. As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.”

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

by Leave a Comment

Despite very recently giving five stars to the latest Grady Hendrix weirdo horror book (review HERE), I was surprised by how much I liked this. As I’ve been exploring the horror genre over the past year, I’ve learned that my tastes usually run towards the lighter end of the horror spectrum, and that I don’t do well with gore and violence just for gore and violence’s sake*. I need that sort of thing to have a purpose, and I need it to not make me […]

“WHERE’S MY COW? ARE YOU MY COW?”

Thud! (Discworld, #34) by Terry Pratchett

by Leave a Comment

This was almost five stars for me, and might very well get bumped up on eventual re-read, but for now it’s holding steady at 4.5 stars, rounded down. It didn’t quite reach the level of profound delightment that I need in order to give a Discworld book five stars. Mostly what I feel right now as I type this review is sad that this was my last brand new City Watch book, which has been my favorite of the Discworld sub-series. And I am very […]

Give this little sapphic sasquatch book a shot!

Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

by 4 Comments

This was weird and I kind of loved it. After seeing this cover I absolutely needed to read it, and that just goes to show you that sometimes you CAN judge a book by its cover. But before I get to what I liked about the book, I do want to nitpick a little, mostly with the marketing. This book is being billed as a “horror comedy” and while it’s most definitely horror, I don’t think it’s comedy. Unless you count satire as a subgenre […]

Three to drop and one to circle back to someday

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village by Jay Cooper and Maureen Johnson

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

A Psalm for the Wild-built by Becky Chambers

by Leave a Comment

Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village by Jay Cooper and Maureen Johnson I got about halfway through this book. The gist is that, in a Quaint English Village, everything and everyone is out to murder you. The first few chapters made me chuckle. I skimmed the rest. There are some quizzes to see if you are paying attention. For me, the novelty wore off after the first one. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson I […]

St. Oscars world

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente.

by Leave a Comment

I did not think I would like the short novel; The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente. I felt I would never understand it and was going to stop reading as things felt disjointed, the narrator was bouncing all over, and there was stuff that was very off. The book felt like a translation that was not smoothly translated at that. However, once I understood the flow (there was one), the bounces between “really then, then, and now,” plus how reliable the narrative is […]

Disintegration Station

The Promise by Damon Galgut

by Leave a Comment

South Africa, 1987. As the country is in the death throes of Apartheid, defiantly buckling under the weight of an international boycott, a Jewish woman named Rachel Swart, mother of three and wife to farmer Herman ‘Manie’ Swart, dies of an unnamed disease. She makes her husband promise to gift the little shack on the back of her property to Salome, their maid. Amor, their youngest daughter, overhears them. After Rachel’s death the promise seems all too soon forgotten; they seem surprised whenever Amor brings […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo