Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“We can’t expect one person – or even two – to take on the entire burden of resisting on their shoulders. We all have to stand up and say NO.”

The Everlasting Rose by Dhonielle Clayton

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CBR 13 Bingo: Flora The Everlasting Rose is the sequel to Dhonielle Clayton’s  The Belles.  To quote myself regarding The Belles, “This was fantasy the likes of which I haven’t read before, full of decadence and frippery, a magic system based on beauty, and I was entranced.”  The Everlasting Rose is a different beast of a book compared to its predecessor as it is a fugitive and resistance story. The soon to be new Queen of Orleans, Sophia, is setting the pieces in place for a […]

“…wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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Cbr13bingo Travel This short, internationally acclaimed novel reads like a parable. The Alchemist is the story of a young man, simply known as “the boy”, in his quest to find his treasure. Similar to other literary quests or odysseys, the young man will encounter those who help him as well as obstacles along the way, but it is the internal journey he takes, the things he learns, that matter most. The Alchemist is a very spiritual book that emphasizes the connectedness of all things and […]

They would have gotten away with it too…

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

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CBR13 Bingo: Book Club (the July selection of my fantasy/sci-fi book club here in Oslo. I read it in early June) Official book description: The surviving members of a forgotten teenage detective club (and their dog) must reunite as broken adults to finally solve the terrifying case that ruined them all and sent the wrong man to prison. Scooby Doo and the gang never had to do this! 1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small […]

I made it through Jordan – Brandon Sanderson is next: The Wheel of Time review (Part VII)

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan

Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

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So, I’ve been reading through the Wheel of Time, for those who haven’t been reading these reviews. I started the series in the late ’90s, and kept up with them through the publication of Crossroads of Twilight. When Crossroads came out in 2003, I was in college and had all but stopped reading for pleasure. It wasn’t until about 2009-10 that I started again. By that point, Robert Jordan had died and Brandon Sanderson had taken over the series. It had been almost a decade […]

Yes, David we will read your books

A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon

The Rain Came Down by David Shannon

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I am not a huge David Shannon fan, yet I do recommend him as the style can be quirky, funny and even serious with a moral (but not all the time). And A Bad Case of Stripes and The Rain Came Down are pure Shannon. (Though Rain has help with Bruce Bailey Johnson if you choose the audio version with a paper copy of the book). And yes, I have read all the books in the image, but I picked two that grabbed me. In […]

A book I loved years ago is still great on re-read.

The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1) by Helene Wecker

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This was just as good the second time. Not going to do a whole huge review because I’m tired, and I’d rather be reading the sequel instead of writing things. I still think this is an absolutely lovely portrayal of the immigrant experience, both in the way it portrays actual historical immigrant communities (particularly Little Syria and the Jewish communities in NYC) and in the way that Wecker uses the outsized fantastical experiences of the golem and the jinni (Chava and Ahmad, as they become […]



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