Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Book of Three

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

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After reading a smidge too much big kid literature, I decided to reread one of my favorite YA book series of all time: The Chronicles of Prydain. I reread these stories at least half a dozen times in middle school through high school. They inspired my love of fantasy stories that persists to this day, and I can tell that the lessons they imparted were important, because they were hard for me to hear as a kid. The story is set in a half-history half-mythological […]

Camp Half-Blood 4 Life (Percy Jackson and the Olympians series review)

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan

The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

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I read this series when it was originally published and didn’t think about it much after I’d finished. I liked it, yes, but it wasn’t a new obsession for me and I never really planned on revisiting Percy’s world. Then I watched the teaser for the Disney+ show coming out next year and checked them out from the library and that’s how I spent my last two weeks. The series follows Percy Jackson, who finds out he’s a demigod, the son of Poseidon and a […]

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

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Cannon Ball Passport: Friend recommended! Tl;dr I think I’ll read the next in this series but I wasn’t as keen on this outing as I was with the first book, Ninth House. I’m glad that when I originally tried reading this, and lost the loan before starting through a mistake of airplane mode, that I didn’t go out and spend money buying a copy–although Bardugo’s defense of the genre does make me want to capitalism in her direction. We pick up with Galaxy “Alex” Stern, now […]

https://cannonballread.com/2023/06/hell-bent-wicherwill/

She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

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CBR15 Passport Siberia Now mystical and/or spooky circus is one of my favorite vibes, but it is the language of this book that sets it apart for me, ranging from an East End London lilt to wonderfully baroque proclamations a la P. T. Barnum at his most fulsome. The plot is based on a feminist twist of the Leda and the swan myth.  Fevvers, renowned aerialiste, is recounting her origin story in turn of the century London to a young American journalist.  At six two […]

Magical Reads That I Come Back To Again and Again

The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones

Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones

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I think I’ve already extolled the virtues of this series at length here before, so I’ll just say that this is one of my favorites of all time and I am completely biased in favor of these books. I am a lifelong Chrestomanci fan and re-read a couple of these about once a year. This year I took on The Magicians of Caprona and Witch Week, which I was less obsessed with as a kid so I don’t remember the plots quite as well, which […]

Iris had wanted to be independent, but instead, she’d assembled a team.

The Only Purple House in Town by Ann Aguirre

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By chapter 2 this book I had never read before was a comfort read. I’m not even surprised by that. Ann Aguirre writes books that are fun and kind. Her books are fluffy cinnamon rolls, even when she is delving into emotionally difficult topics. The Only Purple House in Town exists in the Fix-It Witches universe. Iris Collins is a disappointment to (most of) her family of psychic vampires. When we first meet Iris, she feels like a failure because her abilities have never manifested […]



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