Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To dream the impossible dream (and how to take care of it)

I Want to Be a River by Cecile Elma Roger

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Able, when he grows up, he wants to be a river. But since unrealistic dreams are not allowed, his friends try to discourage him. And eventually, they do. Of course, then Able is no longer their smiling, happy friend; but a sad, unsmiling one, and they are aware of the thing that they did. The themes of I Want to Be a River are to help others embrace their dreams no matter how ridiculous they are, and when things are quiet and you are alone […]

Did they use Monsters Ink to write this?

Why Did the Monster Cross the Road? by R. L. Stine

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When you have two powerhouse writers and illustrators like R. L. Stine and Marc Brown, you figure you will have a homerun out of the park hit. Um. Sorry, not this time. Oh, I am not saying Why Did the Monster Cross the Road? was not good, it just was not a huge win for me. Some of the jokes were amusing (Why did the Monster cross the road? To bite someone on the other side) but not all of them (What did the monster […]

A Delightful Diversion

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming

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See what had happened was I woke up with a migraine. A real doozy of a skull-splitter. And there I was, in bed with medicines and comfort objects and drawn curtains and agony. Days like this I can’t watch tv, can’t do much of anything besides lie still and quiet and wait for sleep or sweet release of death. I open my kindle, throw it in to dark mode, bump up the text size until the words aren’t blurry and hope to find a story […]

Last Defender of Camelot – one of Zelazny’s best

Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny

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After finishing a book I really hated, I needed to cleanse my palate, so to speak. The song Guinevere from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came on and I realized it had been a while since I had re-read The Last Defender of Camelot. It does not disappoint. Is the style a bit dated? Sure. Are there some problematic passages in “Damnation Alley”? Without question, especially the Nazi ones and the handling of female characters in that story (one reason why this received 4 stars […]

Edge Dancer – it fell off a cliff

Edge Dancer by Brandon Sanderson

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My son got me started on the Stormlight Archives series from Brandon Sanderson and I fell in love with the story. They were complex, filled with interesting characters and a world that was richly defined. None of that is present in this book. Edge Dancer takes places after book 2 of the Stormlight Archives and focuses solely on one character that appeared in a brief aside in book 2. One of the strengths of the previous books was the multitude of characters, all of whom […]

A classic twist

The Runaway Dosa by Suma Subramaniam

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“The more you eat, the more you crave! You can’t catch me, no matter how brave!” In another review I mentioned that I like folk tales, though if one is retold just to retell it by adding a few diverse elements, but keep the rest, I am not really a fan. However, The Runaway Dosa showed me that might not always be the case. Suma Subramaniam took The Gingerbread Man story, but added an Indian twist that pays tribute to the old and new. Based […]



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