Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson

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I think I’ve found my favourite genre! It only took me 37 years (as of today)! Dark Tales is a collection of dark short stories by Shirley Jackson. They range from biting yet realistic dissections of suburban life to classic ghost stories and fever-dream-like tales with loose endings frayed as cut ribbons. My favourite stories were ‘Paranoia’, in which an ordinary businessman is hunted through the big city by mysterious figures, and ‘What a Thought’, in which a housewife experiences life- ending changing urges after […]

Jazz Baby

Where All Good Flappers Go: Essential Stories of the Jazz Age by David M. Earle (Editor)

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The flapper girl is an icon of the Roaring Twenties, appearing in plenty of novels and films of the era. In this anthology, Pushkin Press brings together some contemporary short stories about the flapper which were published in magazines and papers of the time that celebrated these young women as a mirror of the times. I haven’t read much literature from the 1920s beyond the obligatory The Great Gatsby, but I’ve always found it intriguing how quickly social mores seemed to swing round during this […]

An auspicious start to CBR17

Tea With Mr. Rochester by Frances Towers

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This is a collection of short stories that I picked up last month from a great little bookstore in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Book Bus Depot is the only bookstore in the US to sell Persephone Books, which, as per their website, “reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly dating from the mid-twentieth century.” The title of this one, Tea With Mr Rochester, is what caught my attention, and it was a surprising and delightful find. Frances Towers did not live to […]

The hope of space

Arca by Van Jensen, Jesse Lonergan (Illustrator)

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) by Martha Wells

Ark (Forward) by Veronica Roth

How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches, #1) by James S.A. Corey

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I often don’t have time for full epic novels, so often turn to science fiction short stories and graphic novels. They can blow my mind with intriguing premises and characters. Unintentionally I kept turning to space stories that explored future possibilities for humanity. I like how novellas and short stories allow dipping my toes into the works of some heavy hitters of sci-fi. Arca is a graphic novel written by Van Jensen and illustrated by Jesse Lonergan. In this story, we meet teenage workers who […]

Slay Ride

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories by Martin Edwards, ed.

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This collection is from the British Library’s Crime Classics series and features 11 stories by some surprising (and surprisingly forgotten) crime writers. I found it at one of the coolest independent books stores I’ve ever seen. If you are ever in the Cincinnati area, particularly Sharonville (a northern suburb), check out out the Book Bus Depot. The store is a non-profit with the goal of raising money to promote childhood literacy and to build up classroom libraries. I met the owner when I visited, and […]

Surprisingly modern for stories written over 30 years ago.

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

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Izumi Suzuki is a bit of a counter-cultural cult icon in Japan, though I’d never heard of her before reading this book. Born in 1949, she arose in a society itching to break away from American occupation and western influence. This was the era of Yukio Mishima, actor, model, and poet who attempted to overthrow a right-wing, ultra-nationalist overthrow of the government before failing and committing seppuku. The ’60s were a tumultuous time in Japan, as they were in many parts of the world. In […]



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