women writers – Cannonball Read 17

“This modern love breaks me”

Blue Sisters (2024) by Coco Mellors

May 26, 2025 by drmllz Leave a Comment

Blue Sisters is about four sisters–except Nicky, the youngest, is dead, and Avery (the eldest organised lawyer one), Lucky (the beautiful model and self-destructive drug-addled party girl), and Bonnie (the sporty one), are flailing, a year on. There is some nuance here–Avery is a former heroin addict about to blow her perfect marriage and house in Hampstead Heath apart; Lucky plays guitar. Bonnie, most intriguingly, is a boxer, and Mellors’s descriptions of her physicality are some of the best passages in the novel: Your knuckles, […]

Took a “year” to read, but a lifetime for the poet to live

The Black Unicorn by Audre Lorde

January 4, 2021 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

I was given The Black Unicorn: Poems by Audre Lorde a few years ago as a Cannonball book exchange gift. Like so many of my books, it was misplaced for a bit (I am not the most organized person to be frank), but recently found it hidden among other lost souls. I started reading this collection of poetry from 1978 (my edition revised in 1995) in 2020 and finished last night (January 3, 2021). Took a whole year! (Okay, year jokes over). Why did this […]

We Are Family, I Got All My Sisters With Me

January 18, 2017 by pluiedenovembre 5 Comments

I love Nadiya Hussain. If you are a fan of The Great British Bake Off, you probably love her too. Nadiya was the winner in 2015, and she is, by all accounts the most popular winner in the history of the show. Charming, warm, funny, self-deprecating and gifted with a marvelously expressive face, she made all of us fall in love with her. Since winning TGBBO, Nadiya has published a cookbook (which I received as a surprise present last week from a lovely friend who […]

A telenovela by any other name smells like a telenovela

January 17, 2017 by pluiedenovembre 2 Comments

At the end of 2016 I realized, to my horror, that I hadn’t read a single book in Spanish, so one of my main reading goals for this year is to read more books in Spanish, preferably by women. And they can’t be translations, that would be cheating, the goal is to read more Hispanophone writers. Enter Contigo en la distancia, by Chilean writer Carla Guelfenbein. This novel won one of the most famous literary prizes in the Spanish-speaking world, the Premio Alfaguara. And I […]

To All the Men I’ve Loved Before

January 20, 2016 by AnnieOnTheEdge Leave a Comment

When my local paper reviewed “Dear Mr. You” by Mary-Louise Parker, the reviewer compared Parker’s writing to Anne Lamott. Since Lamott is possibly my favorite writer I thought “Dear Mr. You” would be a good place to start my Cannonball Read. From what I understand, a friend of Parker’s submitted the book to various publishers without disclosing Parker as the author so I would assume it was published on its own merits. And it is an interesting book. Written as a series of letters to 34 men […]

The Awakening, but with less water

April 9, 2015 by cheerbrarian Leave a Comment

As a Louisiana native, English major, and self-proclaimed avid reader, I have read and studied “The Awakening” many times over. For the unfamiliar, it is about a woman who struggles against the bonds of her marriage, and the confines of society in Louisiana at the turn of the century. Here is the first line of the Goodreads synopsis. When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. I was not a fan of The Awakening initially. As a teenager […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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