Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You learn your lessons and stay vigilant, or you die

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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4.5 stars Official book description: A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die!    The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the […]

Lunch was less than satisfyingly, but these picture books made up for it

Here Comes Ocean by Meg Fleming

My Rainy Day Rocket Ship by Markette Sheppard

Hurry Up!: A Book About Slowing Down by Kate Dopirak

Smashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman

The Ocean in Your Bathtub by Seth Fishman

Meet the Latkes by Alan Silberberg

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I was sitting at lunch, eating something not that great tasting (but when you forget your lunch and the owner provides food, you know beggars can’t be choosey), I decided to distract myself with some quick picture book reading. And I found six titles that By George the III! Are pretty darn good. Each of these is a Third or a 3 rating. Not OMG but books I will gladly recommend and might just read a second time. Here Comes Ocean by Meg Fleming (author) […]

What if Cinderella met a god of death instead of a fairy godmother?

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I was on hold for this book for months at my local library, and after having read it, I get it. I had a co-worker who said there was a difference between books and literature. At the time, I thought she was being snooty, but every now and then I read a book that makes me go, “Oh, so that’s what she meant.” Gods of Jade and Shadow is literature.  Casiopea Tun lives with her family in a small village in the Yucatán peninsula. Casiopea […]

A whole lot of fighting happens

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

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Spoiler warning! This is book 17 in a long, ongoing series. This really isn’t the place to start. In fact, this book doesn’t even work on its own, so don’t even think to read this review if you’re not caught up. Normally, I’d recommend that you start with book 1, but the first three books of The Dresden Files are pretty bad, so you’d be better off starting with book 4, Summer Knight. I highly recommend the audio books, narrated by James Marsters. They’re what finally sold […]

Did not expect to love a book about zombies

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

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4.5 stars Official book description: The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least […]

Sailing sailing the ocean blue

Kondo & Kezumi Visit Giant Island by David Goodner

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Kondo & Kezumi Visit Giant Island is a quirky story about friendship, overcoming fears and having adventures. David Goodner created book one of an unknown number of books in a new series for an early reader of chapter books. Or for a child that is willing to sit and listen to a longer story. Fun illustrations by Andrea Tsurumi are simple even slightly simplistic (but not in any way negative). The tone of the story feels like it has a “worldly” feel to it as […]



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