Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About auntadadoom

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Former ethical hacker who stopped hacking but kept being ethical. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: auntadadoom's Quick Questions interview.)

auntadadoom's Reviews:

Fun world, solid structure and writing, stop after two “Whys”

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You by Ally Carter

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When you’re a student at a school for spies, which is disguised as a tony all-girls academy, and by the way your mom is the headmistress … falling for a townie is a little tough. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You is the first in a series about the students at Gallagher Academy — the Gallagher Girls. I’m not sure if all the books in the series focus on the same protagonist (Cammie, the daughter of the headmistress), but […]

Like a Hallmark Christmas movie but playful and there’s a murder

A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer

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I had read a couple of Georgette Heyer’s romance books — Frederica is a favorite — but A Christmas Party is the first mystery of hers that I’ve given a try. It’s solid! As the book opens, Joseph Herriard is busy preparing the house for a Christmas party. It’s not his house — it belongs to his crotchety brother, Nathaniel, but Joseph is determined to gather the family for a festive cozy time. Unfortunately his family includes all kinds of confounding characters — besides the […]

Mother-flipper thinks everything is a mother-flipping joke

Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey by Richard Ayoade

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If you are familiar with Richard Ayoade’s acting (or, as he would say, ‘acting’) from The IT Crowd, Apple & Onion, or The Mighty Boosh, you just might hear his distinctive voice and cadence in your head as you read every line of Ayoade on Ayoade. The book, ostensibly an artist “in conversation with himself” as he “reflects on his cinematic legacy” is a collection of Ayoade being weird with and to and about himself, in front of readers, in different prose forms. There are […]

This is a Scalzi book, end of message

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

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The Kaiju Preservation Society is intended to be 100% escapist, lightweight fun for the reader, and it certainly succeeds at that. I read the whole thing on my first plane flight since 2020, and it went down easy. The protagonist, Jamie Gray, is working as a food delivery driver in the early months of the pandemic when he gets recruited by an old friend to staff an “animal rights organization.” Given the title of the book you may guess approximately what comes next. It turns […]

Can a review be 250 heart emojis, asking for a friend

The Pirates! In an Adventure with the Romantics by Gideon Defoe

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Ah, the dilemma of the book review … when I hate it, I have SO MUCH to say, but when I love it, all I want to do is poke cloves in an orange in the shape of a heart and send it to the author by overnight mail. The Pirates! In an Adventure with the Romantics is the fourth book of a series by Gideon Defoe. I have now read three of the four, and I can’t even contemplate reading the last one (Napoleon, […]

Gosh how zany – The mute secretary is also a stripper(! lolol)

Jumpers by Tom Stoppard

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I picked this up from a library book sale. Jumpers is the first play Tom Stoppard put out after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and even though the persnickety toffs of Concord MA apparently didn’t check it out very often, I thought it showed some promise. The back cover copy is of the “can you believe how wacky” genre, like, “British astronauts are scrapping with each other on the moon, and spritely academics steal about London by night indulging in murderous gymnastics!” If you are […]



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