Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Another Excellent Retelling of Greek Mythology

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

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We’re all familiar with the story of the fall of Troy. The most beautiful woman in the world ran away from her husband and an entire civilization waged a decade long war to get her back. But in between and around the story of Paris, Helen, and Menelaus are the stories of all the other legendary figures who came to the shores of Troy to honor an oath. Odysseus, Ajax, Agamemnon, Achilles… and Patroclus. Achilles’ grief and rage when Patroclus dies is what gets him […]

Dragons and Romance – The Perfect Match

Books & Broadswords by Jessie Mihalik

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There’s nothing that Feora likes more than stealing the King’s gold, except buying books with it.  When a rather persistent knight shows up, Feroa might have found a new distraction.  Meanwhile, Zenira’s not best pleased about having to sell her rock collection when her landlord raises her rent.  However, the mysterious collector who buys it has a messy mansion that makes Zenira just itch to clean it.  When she strikes a deal to clean the mansion, she may discover more she bargained for. This delightful […]

Your identity

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Chair by Ryan Rae Harbuck

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The title When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Chair is confusing at first. But once I got into the things, I realized two things. One, there must have been a translation (the flow of the text was off for me, and that’s usually because of a translation) and the second the idea is that the girl wants to be a chair because it is useful, it belongs, it is good. This is compared to how she feels about herself, which is maybe […]

Too many elements at once

Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries

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Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries is in one word, odd. But not in the usual sense of things. The story is straightforward: a person is coming to terms with the changes in their lives, the fact they are not like their siblings as they are the “normal one” (ie: does not have powers) and is trying to deal with headache and heartaches. But there are several places where things fall short of being “smooth” and go into the odd. First, the pages are crowded. […]

Mirror, Mirror

Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher

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This is T. Kingfisher’s take on the Snow White story, and as always, I quite enjoyed her take. But it’s also not my favorite of hers (that might still be Nettle and Bones for these stand alones). There was something with this one where it felt like we stalled in the middle or forgot the main point of the story and got too distracted. Another review on Goodreads stated something along the lines of this being a novel where the author got a bit too […]

The biggest struggle in earning your freedom is feeling like you deserve it.

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen

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What if some people from the past returned to the present? What if one of them was Harriet Tubman? Bob the Drag Queen imagines a world in which Harriet Tubman, her brother Moses, and some of their Underground Railroad crew return to the present (as does Fredrick Douglass) and they want to tell their story in the form of a show. They hire a songwriter who once won Grammys. His career was torpedoed when he was outted on live tv. Harriet and her crew demolish […]



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