Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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This is my first time doing the CBR!

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Rest Well, And Dream of Large Women

Shrill by Lindy West

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In case you haven’t encountered her on the internet, Lindy West is a writer and comedian who battles trolls–the kind that dwell on Twitter instead of beneath bridges. She’s also an audaciously loud, unapologetically fat woman in a world that prefers its women to be quiet and thin. I identified with a lot of what West wrote about in Shrill. Her lifelong struggle with body image issues, her journey to find her voice as a writer, and–most recently–her incredible screw-up of a freelance project. Today, […]

Historical Fantasy Takes a Weird Turn

Betraying Season by Marissa Doyle

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I finally got around to re-reading Betraying Season, the sequel to Bewitching Season, and now I remember why I was so reluctant to tackle this one again. Not only is it not particularly good, but it’s also weird. If the first book is a pleasant afternoon tea in a sunlit parlor, then the sequel is more like gnawing on stale fried chicken by the light of the full moon–odd, unsatisfying, and more than a little off-putting to witness. After her twin sister marries at the […]

Actual Improvement or Stockholm Syndrome? Books 4-6 of Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery Series

In a Witch's Wardrobe, Tarnished and Torn, A Vision in Velvet by Juliet Blackwell

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After reading (and not particularly enjoying) the first three books in Juliet Blackwell’s ongoing Witchcraft Mystery series, I had decided to give them up. By the third one, I was mostly hate-reading anyway, curious to see how crummy these stories would get. But…well, I’d already put the fourth volume, In a Witch’s Wardrobe, on hold at the library, and when it was automatically delivered to my Kindle, I read it anyway. And then something surprising happened–it was actually pretty good. Some of the more annoying […]

Old-School Horror for Kids

The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull by John Bellairs

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When I was a kid, my dad and I read books together. It’s a bittersweet memory, since we’ve been estranged for most of my adult life. My favorite author then was John Bellairs, who wrote Gothic horror set during the era of his own childhood in the 1950s. The early editions had covers and sometimes illustrations by Edward Gorey, and between Bellairs and Gorey, I grew up with a lifelong love of the macabre. This weekend, I had to do an assignment for my editing […]

Perhaps I Am Not the One Who Is Broken

The Rules of Scoundrels Series, Books 1 & 2 by Sarah Maclean

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Warning: The following review contains spoilers and feminist rallying cries I’ve read a handful of historical romance novels, including a weird period in my life where I was briefly into pioneer-era mail-order-bride stories, of which there are a surprising number. (Less surprising, however, than the number of “Earth woman becomes mated to a pair of sexy alien warlords who are sometimes also brothers” stories, which is apparently a genre that exists.) It’s not that I think love stories are inherently bad, or that enjoying them […]



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