Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A very sweet adventure story, gorgeously packaged

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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4.5 stars Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Celestial (there is a big moon and several stars on the cover) What if in The Princess Bride, Buttercup didn’t sit at home and mourn for Westley when he was captured by pirates, but instead went off to try to rescue him? Of course, that would mean Buttercup had any agency at all in either the novel or the film, and she really doesn’t. But if Buttercup was a young woman named Tress, from a barren and fairly desolate […]

Face your demon

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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I recently finished Demon Copperhead—or more accurately, listened to it on audiobook—and it completely captured me. At over 30 hours long, it ticked my new criteria for audiobooks: a truly epic runtime that gives me a good return on my Audible credit. I tend to listen while I’m out running or commuting, and choosing a long, immersive story like this one keeps me motivated to keep getting out and doing things. It becomes part of the rhythm of life.   Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, inspired […]

Like Lord of the Flies at Disneyland

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven

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If you strand a bunch of (mostly) 20 something year old adults who work in a theme park for 35 days during a natural disaster, what do you think would happen? If you’re hoping for Temptation Island level hijinks, you’ll be sorely disappointed. But if you’re leaning toward murder and heads on a stick level violence, then this is the book for you! Think Lord of the Flies, but with adults and multiple tribes. This book works for a lot of reasons. First, you have […]

One of My Year’s Best

Circe by Madeline Miller

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Whether or not you know anything about Greek Mythology is irrelevant when it comes to reading Circe. You could go in cold, like I did, or with a vast knowledge of the myths. If, like me, you thought of Greek myths as being about otherwordly beings who have little in common with mortals, you may be pleasantly surprised by this book. Miller makes the gods human, accessible, fallible, and vulnerable. And I guess anyone who knows anything about these stories might already know that, but […]

Queer Professional Snoop Solving Mysteries in Space

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite, Blair Baker (narrator)

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About a month ago a large sinkhole opened in the interstate a few miles from where I live, and it has wrecked absolute chaos on my commute since as it closed the eastbound lanes of said interstate, and the detours send everyone directly into my commute. My peaceable 35-minute drive to work has bloomed to over an hour and is unpredictable so I’m leaving even earlier to ensure I get to work on time and don’t get docked pay, again. So… I have significantly increased […]

“fear is an anchor, but it’s also a bridge”

The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. I’m going to keep reading this author’s books as long as I like the premises, because she is improving as a writer as she goes. There are still things in here that ultimately meant I couldn’t bump this up to four stars (dear lord, the sex scene*) because this simply just isn’t as good as books that I have rated four stars in the past. But her ideas […]



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