Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Is everyone really crazy but me?”

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 25/30 This is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. 3.7 stars is the actual number averaging all the stories out, but that’s really high for me and short stories, especially literary ones. And also, I’m rounding up. Specific thoughts on all the stories in my updates, but overall this is a great collection of stories about the ways that arbitrary social rules degrade our humanity. Brief thoughts on each story below. [3.70, rounded […]

Fairy Tales: a genre by and for “we the people”

Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book by Angela Carter

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I picked up this fairy tale collection in Tim’s Books, a tiny off-the-path used bookstore in Provincetown, because it had Angela Carter’s name on it, and I’ve been dedicating my book-buying to hoarding collections by the best fairy tale scholars, especially the feminist ones. It has, as you can see, a delightfully dated cover, but its ideas are very radical and timeless. The book is a selection of fairy tales and folktales chosen by Carter (author of the brilliant The Bloody Chamber), highlighting some of the […]

A pretty disappointing anthology, to be honest.

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror by ed. Jordan Peele & John Joseph Adams

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While there were a handful of really good stories in here, overall I was disappointed with this collection. Way too many confusing or unsatisfying endings. (This was edited by Jordan Peele, but also by John Joseph Adams, whose anthologies in the past I have not really liked, either, and I wish I would have known he was involved before I read it. Would have had more accurate expectations.) “Reckless Eyeballing,” N.K. Jemisin — Okayyyy, but what does it meaaaan. 4/5 stars “Eye & Tooth,” Rebecca Roanhorse — The […]

Radicalize your reading through fairy tales

The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales by Hermynia Zur Mühlen, Jack Zipes

Smack-Bam, or The Art of Governing Men: Political Fairy Tales of Édouard Laboulaye by Édouard Laboulaye, Jack Zipes

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales by Juwen Zhang

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If you ask me “What’s the best thing about fairy tales?” my brain will combust. But in this very moment, I’ll say one of the best things is that there are so many forgotten or “undiscovered” tales to enjoy. In an effort to bring some forgotten folklorists to the forefront, fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes (my nerdiest old man crush) and Princeton University Press came together for a new-ish series called Oddly Modern Fairy Tales. Each volume concentrates on a writer or movement in fairy […]

An archaeologist, an amusement park employee, a talking pig. Everyone is doing their best.

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

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In 2020, when many of us began working from home, I started listening to a podcast series called The Happiness Lab. The creators had produced a string of episodes dedicated to coping with the pandemic, and one episode in particular stuck with me. The theme was that, at some point, we would come out on the other side of our current global challenge, and one way to get through it was to think about what kind of story we want to be able to tell […]

“I realized I didn’t want to carry them around for the rest of my life.”

Nude Model and Other Stories by Tsubasa Yamaguchi

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This is a very interesting and striking manga collection of three pretty dark short stories. I haven’t read the author’s other work, Blue Period, which is about a teenager discovering art in high school, but I had looked at it before and liked the art style, which convinced me to pick this up. Since it’s a standalone consisting of three short stories, I figured it would be a good insight into her style and I liked the striking cover a lot. I liked all three […]



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