Thought Train to Pusan

Much like many fellow Cannonballers, I was highly anticipating this novel from Emil St. John Mandel after loving Station Eleven. Much like that book, The Glass Hotel offers a series of interconnected characters throughout different moments of their lives. The biggest difference, I felt however, was in the setting: while Station Eleven presents a hypothetical future world, The Glass Hotel is firmly rooted in reality and modern history, including the economic crash of 2008. Specifically, the narrative of The Glass Hotel centers on a woman named Vincent who is a bartender at a luxury hotel in British Columbia, and how her life becomes entwined with the owner of the hotel named Jonathan, who is involved in a long-running investment scam. Other characters that come in and out of focus include Vincent’s half-brother named Paul, various people who invested with Jonathan over the years, and other friends and co-workers of the two along the way. The picture painted by these passing moments ...

I will be honest: I am not into series right now. I genuinely didn’t know that this was going to be the opener of more than one novel (I just snagged it from the “available now” section of my library app after reading a short synopsis), so when the ending was approaching I just had a feeling I knew where it was going to lead: leaving things with that particular YA dystopian ending to lead you into act II. And while this book certainly kept my interest and developed its own lore amongst its contemporaries, I found the back half to be far less-engaging than the first. We Set the Dark on Fire follows Dani, a girl who is about to graduate from the Medio School for Girls, where distinguished young women are trained for one of two roles: to be the ever logical, unemotional wife who runs the household (called a primera), or to be the emotional, caring child bearer to her husband (known as a segunda). High-class men in Media purchase the hand in marriage of two women for the family (one prime...

The premise of this novel immediately drew me in (a vampire story examining race, sexuality, and female empowerment over time and space: who wouldn’t be interested!), but I soon found myself slogging through it, despite my initial excitement. The Gilda Stories starts with an unnamed girl who is on the run after escaping slavery in 1850s Louisiana. She is taken in and taken care of by a woman named Gilda who runs a brothel, and as time goes on it is alluded that this Gilda is a vampire, who eventually passes on her power and name to the young girl, now known as Gilda for the rest of the novel. From here, we see a series of vignette-type stories following Gilda across 200 year throughout America: moving through California in 1980, Missouri in 1921, Massachusetts in 1955, New York from the 1970s-1980s, New Hampshire in 2020, and finally a place known as “Land of Enchantment” in 2050. Throughout her life, Gilda meets different members of her greater vampire “family”, and forms bonds of he...

Beirut Hellfire Society is more a book of moments and observation than an active plot, and as such lost me at times, despite the promising premise. It focuses on an undertaker named Pavlov in 1978 Beirut, as war rages throughout the city and surrounding areas. Amidst all the carnage and daily death, Pavlov finds himself in the employment of a mysterious group known as the Hellfire Society. His job is to secretly give them their last burial and rites, as they would otherwise be denied due to their religion, sexuality, and other activities. What presents itself throughout the novel are questions about ritual and our choices in the face of death that surrounds our every day in a senseless and unyielding way. The novel began in such a tender fashion, passing the torch from Pavlov’s father to his son, a way of respecting the lives of the dead despite their acceptance in greater society. And what a beautiful sense of community and closure this could have been. But as soon as the introductio...

Number 2 of my reads for the #CannonBookClub this June, and it’s a bit of a different tone from my previous read of The Disasters , but I have really enjoyed both so far! I Hope You Get This Message begins after earth unscrambles a message from an alien planet, stating that they will be deliberating whether or not to terminate earth within 1 week. While most of the world scrambles to bunker down or descends into chaos, this novel focuses on  three teenagers each with goals of their own, mostly centered around finding people or getting messages to where they need to go before the end of the alien deliberations: Jesse just wants to find a way to give his mother a better life, Cate is looking for the father she never met after her mother gives her a letter she meant to send to him, and Adeem believes he hears a message from his sister who left home on the radio and now searches to reconnect with her. Without giving too much away, we follow the journey of these three young ...

“Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting.” I hadn’t actually heard of this novel before, but saw it was a new offering on my library app, along with a comparison to One of Us Is Lying , a book that I reasonably enjoyed, coupled with a juicy-sounding concept. And given that I recently binged the Netflix Series, Elite , you might say I enjoy soapy teen dramas involving murder, secrets, the whole shebang from time to time. Yet, despite a really intriguing premise that could result in a range of focuses for the characters, I ultimately didn’t love this one, and felt myself heading towards what I suspected was a disappointing conclusion throughout the back-half of the story. This novel really wants to have some teeth to it, and while it presents a lot of serious topics (murder, drug use, bullying, suicide, abusive families, etc), the need for a surprise twist, along with a collection of characters that behave repetitively as little-m...

This was my first choice for reading out of the options of June’s The Future is Queer #CannonBookClub, though to be honest all of the 4 possible books for the book club sounded right up my alley! A group of so-called disasters having to come together to save themselves and the universe? A found family that comes together through their shared factor of being outcasts in one way or another? I love to see it. The Disasters opens with a group of 4 young people (largely centered on the POV of one boy named Nax) as they are being kicked out of an elite space academy called Ellis Station for various reasons. This space station trains people to take on important roles on newly established colony planets in space, as Earth grows increasingly populated. However, despite what should be a one-way trip back to earth for all of these academy rejects, the group witnesses a terrorist attack on the space station, and barely escape. Now they are on the run from authorities as the small crew is turne...