Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About ElCicco

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Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

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This ain’t Green Acres

In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomas Gonzalez

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Cbr15passport books from different countries (Colombia) I learned about this short novel from a NYT “By the Book” interview with Patricia Engel. When asked about a great book that no one seems to know about, she mentioned Tomas Gonzalez’s In the Beginning Was the Sea (published in 1983, English translation in 2014 by Frank Wynne) for its shocking twists and turns. I must admit, it did not disappoint. The set up of the novel had the potential for it to be a comedy, but this […]

“How terrible – to be an ordinary orphan.”

When We Were Sisters: A Novel by Fatimah Asghar

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CBR15passport new to you authors Fatimah Asghar (they/them) is a writer and co-producer of the Ms. Marvel series on Disney+ as well as creator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls. They have published poetry and a previous novel, If They Come For Us. Asghar’s parents experienced the chaos and violence of the partition of India and Pakistan and emigrated to the US, where Asghar was born.  Asghar’s parents died when Asghar was a child. While similar events occur in When We Were Sisters, this […]

Big Finish!

The Toll: Arc of a Scythe Book 3 by Neal Shusterman

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This series is outstanding. This final book hit all the right notes and brought its several storylines together in a coherent, exciting and generally satisfying way. My review of Thunderhead indicated that there was a biblical tone to that book, and that tone is even more obvious in The Toll. But this is not a series about religion so much as about human nature, politics and belief. The Toll brings together four storylines. There is the story of Scythe Faraday and his search for the […]

I’m dying. I’m dead. Murdered by the puppy cannon!

The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan

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CBR15passport recommended ‘You can address me by my preferred title: you idiot.’ I’ve seen references to “the puppy cannon” amongst romance novel fans here on CBR over the years. I never really investigated what it meant and in my head, for some reason, it was “the puppy canon,” like some kind of reference to a specific sub-genre of romance novel. It is not. It is truly the puppy cannon, and if there were to be some kind of puppy cannon canon, I would be all […]

It’s biblical!

Thunderhead: Arc of a Scythe Book 2 by Neal Shusterman

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Thunderhead, the second book in Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy, is a gripping, exciting novel that sets the stage for major conflict in book 3, which I can’t wait to start. Book one introduced the reader to Shusterman’s futuristic world in which all evils seem to have been eradicated: illness, disease, war, crime, even death have been brought under control. In this world, people who meet unfortunate accidents or try to kill themselves can be revived. One is only truly dead when a scythe […]

Too Much and Never Enough

The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan

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CBR15passport recommended I know the Courtney Milan fans out there love this particular book (shoutout to Malin and Narfna) in the Brothers Sinister series and having now read it, I get it. It really is a fantastic novel with characters that I love and an historical set up that resonates still today. The Countess Conspiracy deals with matters of work/family, what “women’s work” is, and that feeling when you are both too much for people and still not enough no matter what you do. The […]



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