Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

CBR15 Bingo: Dwelling

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

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CBR15 Bingo: Dwelling (the “haunted” house is pretty central to the story). This was my fantasy/sci-fi book club’s selection for May, and while I normally don’t like horror books, I read this mainly because I was so impressed with T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone, and also because it really was very short. It’s a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, which I have never read, and because I’m not a huge fan of Poe, I didn’t bother reading it […]

A master distills fantasy down to its essence

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

The Owl Service by Alan Garner

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner

Boneland by Alan Garner

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Bingo (In order):  Guide, Relationships, Nostalgia, Europe, Adulthood Passport: England When Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize I was surprised, not because I don’t think he’s a brilliant writer worthy of a major literary award, but because awards like this don’t seem to take fantasy seriously, despite the depth of the ideas and the beauty of the prose, and I hadn’t realised that this author I loved in my childhood was still alive and still writing.  Treacle Walker is not […]

What were the choices? She had a bed-making intruder, she’d done it on autopilot, or the place was haunted. With bed-making ghosts.

Inheritance by Nora Roberts

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Nora Roberts starts off her new series, The Lost Bride Trilogy, with a couple of classic tropes – coming home early to find your fiancé in bed with another person, and discovering you have an unknown wealthy relative who has died and left you a manor house and the funds to care for it. These things happen to Sonya in different chapters, but neither is a spoiler. The newly single Sonya discovers her father had an unknown twin, who has left her the family home […]

Another one of those moments when Ruby had to choose whether to go crazy or just deal. A close call this time.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

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“It never fails,” Montrose said. “No matter what they do to you, afterwards it’s like nothing happened. You’re supposed to just be grateful you’re still breathing.” Upon receiving a letter from his estranged father, Atticus Turner returns to his hometown to discover his father missing. He and his uncle George follow the trail to Ardham, Massachusetts, where, with the help of their hometown friend Letitia, they learn secrets about Atticus’s late mother’s family history, and how he and his family could be the keys to […]

It’s too early to write a clever title but honestly you should have your kids read this

Travis Daventhorpe for the Win! Volume One by Wes Molebash

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In the idea of the Judd Winick’s Hilo adventures, but with a bit more “weight”, yet equally funny, magical and scientific, we have Travis Daventhorpe for the Win! Volume One. Good for ages 8 to 11/young12, this book has all the fun of robots, dinosaurs, friends, bullies, wizards and dodgeball! (Okay, dodgeball might not be fun, but the scientific experiments Travis does are.) Travis is new to middle school. He has little to no social skills, but he can build sentient robots that can do […]

We always lose those who we love.

The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams

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My first dog was a Scottish Terrier named Ukko (after an old Finnish God – the God of Thunder and also the Supreme God [1]). Brought from Eastern Finland to Helsinki in 1993. As a puppy, he had a penchant for eating the insides of my shoes. Must have been due to my natural, vibrant scent. Otherwise, like all terriers, he was a fearless creature and built like a tank. Sadly, Ukko had a congenital heart disease which ended his life twelve years later. At […]



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