Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I taught you better than to open doors you can’t close

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

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Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts is yet another great example of the kind of book I would have missed had I not started reading more speculative fiction and diversifying the voices in my library. That would have been a pity, because this complex, powerful novel may very well end up at the top of my 2019 favorites list. After Earth suffered an unnamed cataclysm 300 years ago, the remnants of humanity were crowded onto the spaceship Matilda and launched toward some long-forgotten destination. Humanity […]

Feeling Blue

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Ramona lives in Eulogy, Mississippi with her dad and her pregnant sister in a trailer.  The trailer was supposed to be a place for them to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina.  However, lives don’t just miraculously piece themselves back together and money doesn’t grow on trees and sometimes, moms can’t handle reality and leave. So now 12 years later, Ramona works hard to keep her family afloat.  Fiercely protective of them and constantly worried about their future, she seems to think of her own as a […]

I wanted more from this academic book about the fluidity of male sexuality.

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I picked this up on a whim after a friend reviewed it on Goodreads, and I saw that my library actually had a copy. It was a really interesting reading experience, and overall, I thought Ward did a nice job explaining her points, but I also felt that it was a case of her having opinions (that are maybe right) but not enough evidence to back any of it up. She takes all these incidences and cultural stories and tries to work them into a […]

Are you happy, Malin? I finally read this! (Also, thank you for my book.)

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This book was soooooo not what I was expecting it to be. For some reason, I had it in my head that this was some sort of paranormal romance? And that it was sort of trashy? I have no idea where I got those ideas from, because they couldn’t be further from the truth. This book is epic fantasy, well-written, has intricate plotting, seriously intense worldbuilding . . . and it’s not your mom and pop’s epic fantasy, either. It’s sexy. Like, SEXY sexy. Sex […]

Leonora, Humphrey, James, Phoebe, and Ned

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Earlier this year I attempted The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. It did not go well. The pacing and protagonist didn’t work for me. In attempting to figure out why it didn’t work for me, and what might, Bonnie suggested that I give The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym a chance (which seems fair, because it was Bonnie’s review of The Line of Beauty that got this whole thing started anyway). I very much wanted to read about the issues at hand and […]

Sex Ed 101

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Like many of the books I read, I think I first saw What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013) by Daniel Bergner on the Cannonball site. Immediately intrigued by the subject matter, I put it on my list. The full title gives a pretty good idea of what to expect when you read this book, but I will try to sum up Bergner’s main points. Evolutionary theory has been used to teach us that men are more aggressive and promiscuous […]



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