Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

About Pooja

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Ardent reader of pretty much anything, including the backs of shampoo bottles. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Pooja's Quick Questions interview.)

Pooja's Reviews:

The Story Will Be Told

Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 by Edwidge Danticat

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CBR18 Bingo: Steal – This book tells the story of the arrival of the first conquistadors in the New World, and the start of their wanton rampaging and theft of land and gold from the people who already live there. Anacaona, the niece of one of the five chiefs of Hispaniola, is busy preparing to one day succeed her uncle and considering marriage with another chief. But when she begins to get strange premonitions of danger, and strange white men appear on their shores, she […]

Get Off My Island!

Eden Undone by Abbott Kahler

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CBR18 Bingo: Sheep – The doctor and Dore, and later the Wittmers, all come to Floreana hoping to live simpler, more rustic lives, growing their own food and tending to their own animals. When Friedrich, a German doctor, and his former patient and lover Dore decide to move to an uninhabited Galapagos island in search of a pastoral setting for their self-improvement, they did not know the publicity and violence that would follow. I had a vague recollection of this bizarre story from hearing about […]

The Enemy of My Enemy is… Weirdly Hot?

Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers

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CBR18 Bingo: Bird – Sir Cameron gets turned into a vulture by the evil sorcerer Merulo, in which form he enjoys eating various rodents and pooping on Merulo’s castle walls. When Sir Cameron narrowly escapes death from the hands of his friends in an effort to fulfill a prophecy to defeat a mad sorcerer, he flees for help to the only other person who is now invested in keeping him alive – the sorcerer Merulo himself. This is a light-hearted and charming adventure with some […]

Damian Ad Infinitum

Damsel in Distress by Shannon Drake

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All that heiress Katherine de Montrain wants is to stay in control of her estates and assist her cousin, who masquerades as the notorious Robin Hood. Though she is forced for wed Lord Damian Montjoy for her own protection, she vows she will never submit to him. This is a pretty entertaining historical romance which was originally published in the 1990s. This is a bit of a weird time in the genre, as plots were shifting from the more violent and dubiously consensual bodice rippers […]

“I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder; the sun the needle, laid on the land and drawing out the day’s music—the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting. And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people, washing across the Earth like static.”

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck

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In a “hook-and-chain” couplet structure, Shattuck meanders back and forth across three centuries in New England with six pairs of stories exploring themes that rhyme. This collection starts off pretty slow and gentle, and for the most part stays that way, telling the stories of ordinary people and mostly ordinary happenings. As such, I found myself quite surprised about halfway through about how thoroughly I had been sucked in, and how much I was enjoying myself. Part of what sets this collection of stories apart […]

When Your In-Laws are Forever

My Big Fat Vampire Wedding by Jessica Gadziala

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Pandora needs to get married in three months to secure her family inheritance, and Victor needs money to finish his PhD studies. A fake marriage would solve both their problems, and soon sparks are flying between the pair. The only trouble is that Victor has no idea that Pandora is a vampire. I loved the premise of this book, but the execution let me down a bit. I waffled between a two- and three-star rating for a while, but ended up going with the former […]



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