Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Dirty War

Velvet Was The Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Read as Part of CBR13Bingo: Rec’d. Inspired by Emmalita’s review.  This one is a tough one to review. I really wish both Cannonball Read and Goodreads had half stars. This is a solid 3.5. I’m giving it the bump to 4 but just barely. I appreciated Emmalita’s review and others I’ve read. BookMarks collected mostly rave reviews about this book. At times, I felt like it elevated itself. The feeling of Mexico City in the 70s, political tension, Cold War flashpoint was real. The two […]

Death becomes her

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Casiopea Tun is a poor relative. She and her mother were taken in by her grandfather when her father died, and since then she has been treated appallingly, more like a lowly servant than a family member. In Mexico in the 1920s, her options are limited but she dreams of escaping her relatives and the small town she’s living in and live The Life: cars, dances, fancy dresses and swims in the ocean. One day, when she’s alone in the house, she opens a chest […]

That night Maite dreamed of drums in the jade-green jungle.

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Velvet Was the Night would make an amazing movie or TV series. The book felt cinematic as I read. Moreno-Garcia paints pictures and moods so beautifully I could see them play out in my head. I don’t usually see books in my head. On top of that, Moreno-Garcia has created a Spotify playlist to listen to while reading. It is excellent. It’s June, 1971 in Mexico City. The Mexican Dirty War is just starting. President Echeverria is suppressing rock and roll. After a couple of […]

There was a game he could see and another he couldn’t, and he would play them both.

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington

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My formative King Arthur works were the 1963 Disney movie The Sword in the Stone, and 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When I discovered Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, as a preteen, my life as a reader of fantasy and romance was set. I’m a King Arthur enthusiast, but not a purist (except for Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 King Arthur – great cast, beautiful visuals, terrible movie that should never have been marketed as “historically accurate”). Hearing that a work is a retelling of […]

An excellent book but not my cup of tea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I read Gods of Jade and Shadow and thought it was enjoyable, so I was excited to read Mexican Gothic.  I’m not sure my expectations were met. Noemi is a socialite in the upper-class of 1950s Mexico City. She goes to parties, she flirts, she wears beautiful gowns because she actually enjoys them, and she wants to go university against her family’s wishes. Noemi’s life gets upended when her father asks her to go check on her cousin Catalina who has written a strange and disturbing […]

A whole bunch of horror

A head full of ghosts by Paul Tremblay

The elementals by Michael McDowell

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Later by Stephen King

The Sun Down motel by Simone St. James

The only good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The hunger by Alma Katsu

Lovecraft country by Matt Ruff

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Hi! My name is The Book Omnivore and I am a few months late to the Cannonball Read  party. I hope that’s ok. I’ve participated in CR a couple of times before but I always hesitate to join because some years I read loads of books and other years my brain refuses to read anything more complicated than the instructions for how you make tea, and I never know what kind of year it’s going to be. But having already read 27 books by May […]



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