Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Wordless Comic Means No Fun Quote Review Title

A Sea of Love by Wilfred Lupano, Gregory Panaccione (illustrator)

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This is a book that only came to my attention because I had a Read Harder task to complete and nothing on my current 600+ Want to Read shelf on Goodreads had anything that fit the bill. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first wordless comic I’ve ever read as an adult.   This is the second book that I tried for this task, as the first ended up not actually being wordless and I returned it to the library (Google is […]

“their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban’s memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams”

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa (Translator)

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I have been circling Gabriel García Márquez for decades, almost too afraid to approach his work at all. On and off the reading lists his works go, a constant pendulum of my ambition or lack thereof. When staring at our Bingo squares and realizing a few short stories and novellas were likely to help my progress I went on the hunt for a few and The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel García Márquez came up. Here we go, I thought – here’s […]

“There are two people inside me and they are at war with each other.”

Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Brian FitzGibbon (Translator)

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This is a book that you have to give yourself over to, you have to meet it where it is and accept its way of imparting the story, of whether there is a story at all, and how the author has built her main character, and how that main character chooses to share her world with you. Once you’ve done that the book embraces you like waves coming onshore. But is it the cold waters of the North Atlantic or something warmer? I have my […]

“On that long journey she wept all the tears stored in her soul, leaving none in reserve for later sorrows.”

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende, Margaret Sayers Peden (translator)

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It has been a few years since I last tackled an Allende work, but with tasks in both the Read Harder and Reading Women challenges about translated works (the former asking for non-European novel in translation, the latter asking specifically for a book by a South American author in translation) I had the perfect excuse to move Eva Luna up my to read list. The amount of emotion, detail, and characterization that Allende weaves into her writing is simply astounding. It always takes me a […]

“Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges. On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.”

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)

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The Reading Women Challenge for 2021 (its last year, as it turns out) contains two challenges which surprisingly caused me some consternation – I didn’t have anything in my nearly 600 book deep to read list that was a book written by an Eastern European woman and/or a crime novel or thriller in translation. I spent time on and off all year hunting up a book that could work for both – it had to be out there and the whole point of this is […]

“It’s because I’m tired of being branded a terrorist; tired that a human life lost in my country is no loss at all.”

Our Women on the Ground: : Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World by Zahra Hankir

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Looking back, I can’t quite remember how this book ended up on my TBR back in February 2020. It did though and I’m glad to have read it, even if it took me longer than I hoped to actually complete it. There is something incredibly valuable about learning a story from the person experiencing it; of seeking out authentic voices and sources. In bringing Our Women on the Ground, Zahra Hankir puts the voice of women journalists from the Arab world front and center, where […]



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