Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A girl and her bear

Bear is a Bear by Jonathan Stutzman

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One bear, one child, lots of adventures. Bear is a Bear is Jonathan Stutzman tapping into the imagination of a child. We see our main character going about daily life and daily play with a giant bear, lovingly tagging along. They make mischief, messes, cry tears, read books, have lots of laughs and love hardily. And one day it is time to say, Goodbye. But it is not the end. Sometime in the not so far-off future, there is another Hello. The playfulness of Stutzman’s […]

This way lies madness. And it is glorious.

A Lady of Rooksgrave Manor by Kathryn Moon

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Y’all. Y’all. Y’ALL. I really don’t know where to start with this one. At the beginning, I suppose. I have recently fallen down the rabbit hole that is TikTok. It took awhile for the algorithm to figure me out, but eventually it got me to BookTok. Specifically SmutTok. It was here that I first heard of a novel by Kathryn Moon entitled A Lady of Rooksgrave Manor. I cannot believe that I am about to type this particular combination of words, but here goes: For […]

For Three!

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Vera Kelly Is Not A Mystery by Rosalie Knecht

Never Easy, Never Pretty: A Fan, A Team, A Championship Season by Dean Bartoli Smith

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Knocked out three books this weekend, all of which I enjoyed to varying degrees…   The Book of Three A cute, charming fantasy novel. Perhaps a little too derivative of LOTR (the wolf-like character might as well have been called “Gollum”) but still entertaining and occasionally refreshing when compared to the rest of the genre. I also enjoyed a compelling female character that had autonomy without having to be everyone’s Hashtag Badass Woman (in other words: I appreciate a male writer who can write a […]

This was great! When is the second book coming?

The Councillor by E.J. Beaton

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Hi. I loved this. Thank you Aquillia. That’s my review. Ugh, so many more words needed. Also, I know I ask for the next book in the title of this review, but I support writers writing on their own schedule. I started listening to the audiobook, narrated by Moira Quirk, after reading Aquillia’s review. When I got to somewhere near the end, I realized that I did not want this book to end and I did not see any information about a release date for […]

Annual Short Story Collection Round-up

New York Fantastic: Fantasy Stories from the City that Never Sleeps by Paula Guran & Others

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Because I’d never ask my students to do something I wouldn’t do, and also because NK Jemisin highly suggests reading short stories to get better at writing long stories, I try to read a short story collection every year. For whatever reason, no matter how good the writing is, short story collections take me EONS to finish, and New York Fantastic was no exception. With twenty stories by different speculative authors, New York Fantastic offers a wide variety of story types and a nice selection of award […]

The Rights of Women and Machines

The Haunting of Tramcar 015 by P. Djeli Clark

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Bingo 14: Machinery The Haunting of Tramcar 015 takes place in the same world as many of the author’s other works, a steampunk alternative history version of Cairo. The titular tramcar is a major part of the setting, the plot, and we even get some attention to the technical specs on how the tech is supposed to work; thus I would argue this novella/novelette qualifies for the technology focus square. The other reason for the label is that there’s a pretty detailed discussion of whether […]



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