Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Second Chances Sometimes Are Worth It

The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

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I had flipped through The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England in a bookstore and decided it didn’t look great. I’m not a big fan of first-person narrating, and I saw a now mildly spoilery part about 2/3 of the way in that seemed dumb, so I put is back. Fast-forward about 6 months and I see the same nook at the library. On a whim, I decided to give it another chance. I’m actually kind of glad that I did. Our narrator wakes […]

The Knights of the Round Table vs. Climate Change

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee

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Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. The realm is in peril, and the knights of the round table have been called back to duty once again, waking up from under the earth to fight . . . climate change. Among other things. Here’s a little bit of the blurb: “An immortal Knight of the Round Table faces his greatest challenge yet—saving the politically polarized, rapidly warming world from itself—in this slyly funny contemporary take […]

“It was just that whenever she had thought of seeing the world, she had never realized what it would be like to have the world see her back.”

The Magician's Daughter by H.G. Parry

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Just lovely from beginning to end. I really need more people to read this! It’s just such a nice little story. The main character is Biddy, a seventeen year old young woman who washed up on the shores of a magical island as a baby and was taken in by the magician, Rowan, and his rabbit familiar Hutchincroft. She can’t do magic herself, but she is raised to love it and want to protect it. And though she loves living on the magical island of […]

Take That you meanie witch and your crazy, supernatural wild boar!

Took by Mary Downing Hahn

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The graphic novel adaptation of the novel Took, has similar qualities to other Mary Downing Hahn books and the “classic 1980s thrillers” I read as a kid (such as Pike, Stine, Cusick, etc.). Those themes are that the “stereotypical normal” (two parents, two to four kids, sometimes a pet or two, and having moved from the city to the country) has fractured and there is supernatural at work. It is a realistic thriller, but with folklore and legends attached. This is a familiar story (the […]

Getting in too deep

The Children of the Sea, Volume one by Daisuke Igarashi

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The Children of the Sea, Volume one is a typical manga illustrated graphic novel. It is sparse and not always expressive, or gives all the information you think you might be needing. Yet, there is something about it that draws you into things, and the story has enough teases to it, to make you (or at least me) want more. Daisuke Igarashi was new to me as an author/illustrator, but I am thinking I might want to look into The Children of the Sea series […]

The wall of Walstead

Pup and Dragon: How to Catch an Elf by Alice Walstead

How to Catch Santa Claus by Alice Walstead

How to Catch a Garden Fairy: A Mythical Adventure Through Nature by Alice Walstead

How to Catch a Daddysaurus by Alice Walstead

My First How to Catch the Big Bad Wolf by Alice Walstead

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I am going through my online reader copy list and found a holiday book, Pup and Dragon: How to Catch an Elf. This is part of a “How to Catch” graphic novel series, and by the author of the picture book How to Catch series, Alice Walstead. These books have various subjects, but I will start with the Pup and Dragon stories. Or story more accurately. I am not sure where in the series How to Catch and Elf falls for our BFFs, Pup and Dragon, but it is not […]



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