Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Failure to Launch

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Here’s what you need to know about Atmosphere: A Love Story, the latest novel from book club powerhouse Taylor Jenkins Reid: -the main character is Joan Goodwin. She is Good, and not just in the sense that she always thinks, feels, and does the right thing. She is also a talented pianist, artist, and cook. She is also the Bestest Aunt Ever. And, oh yeah, an astronaut. One of the first female astronauts, in fact. I’m going to give Jenkins Reid the benefit of the […]

“But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all.”

Home by Marilynne Robinson

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Glory Boughton has returned to the small town of Gilead to take care of her dying father, the Reverend John Boughton. As the youngest of 8 children, she has spent her whole life trying to escape her role as the “baby” of the family and build a life outside of her childhood home. But as a failed engagement coincides with her father’s illness, Glory finds herself back in Gilead, wondering if it can ever truly be a home. Glory’s brother, Jack, is also back in […]

A fun read, but possibly too light-hearted

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

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3.5 stars Twenty years before the events in Legends & Lattes, Viv is a young and relatively inexperienced mercenary, who gets badly injured fighting undead monsters while hunting for a powerful necromancer. Her mercenary band leave her in the quiet and mostly empty seaside town of Murk to heal up and recuperate. She worries that the group are going to leave her there, but thankfully, to take her mind off her fears, she encounters the local bookshop owner, who manages to persuade her (Viv has […]

The hope of space

Arca by Van Jensen, Jesse Lonergan (Illustrator)

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) by Martha Wells

Ark (Forward) by Veronica Roth

How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches, #1) by James S.A. Corey

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I often don’t have time for full epic novels, so often turn to science fiction short stories and graphic novels. They can blow my mind with intriguing premises and characters. Unintentionally I kept turning to space stories that explored future possibilities for humanity. I like how novellas and short stories allow dipping my toes into the works of some heavy hitters of sci-fi. Arca is a graphic novel written by Van Jensen and illustrated by Jesse Lonergan. In this story, we meet teenage workers who […]

There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen

The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza

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This was a book club selection for me – while it definitely is the kind of thing I enjoy (hello, Kate Morton novels), this one wouldn’t have been on my radar at all. The novel alternates chapters between Sara, a chef in Philadelphia with a failed restaurant and a failed marriage, and her great-grandmother Serafina, a young mother in early 20th century Sicily (spanning 1908-1925 to be exact). Sara’s beloved great-aunt Rosie has died and part of her last will is to send Sara off […]

I’d Like to Check Out a Different Book, Please

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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This book is so tedious I almost can’t be bothered. The Midnight Library follows Nora Seed, an Englishwoman with a rather nondescript life who’s fallen on hard times, both emotionally and financially. After a particularly rough day, she decides she would rather no longer be alive. She comes to in some sort of (god, this is annoying) celestial library, staffed by her favorite school librarian. Nora is told that she has been granted the opportunity to explore other possible lives, lives where she made different […]



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