Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

YA Dark Tower – Try to change my mind

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

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I bought this book years ago during a two-for-one deal on Audible and planned to listen during a long car ride. That car ride finally happened this month. I picked the Talisman because I knew it was very connected to The Dark Tower AND it was read by Frank Mueller, who IMHO is the voice of The Dark Tower. The Talisman was not at all what I expected but what I should have expected. The oversimplification is that it is a shorter, YA version of […]

Humanizing a Goddess

Circe by Madeline Miller

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I bought Circe last year after it won a few awards. I finally read it because a friend from work read it and recommended it to me. We were both changing jobs so I wanted to read it while we still worked together so that we could discuss it. It was fantastic. It reminded me, thematically, of Grendel by John Gardner in that the premise is the book is the POV from a character that is considered an antagonist in a different, famous story. Like […]

“The shiniest cloaks and most coveted daggers”

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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  I have a couple of Leigh Bardugo books sitting in my massive TBR pile already but the ingredients of this new book were basically catnip to me (ivy league campus, secret societies, magic, murder mystery) so I put it on hold at the library and waited rather than read what I already had.  Based on the way it’s listed on Goodreads it’s the first in a series and I’ve already tagged it’s untitled sequel as “want to read.”  In the world of Ninth House, secret […]

Try not to be too crabby that this does not come out until August

Crabapple Trouble by Kaeti VanDorn

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Due to the cover of Crabapple Trouble I was worried this might be some really bad acid trip. That fear continued when, I noticed heads did not always meet body in the illustrations and later, heads literally roll away after “popping off” of their bodies. I am assuming kids will be okay with Kaeti VanDorn’s realistic-abstract-unique characters which are sentient fruits and vegetables. But I can see some adults being unnerved by them. After all, the characters are Farmers which technically farm themselves (the lemon […]

When You Make a Deal with a Nixie, remember to find out if your wife is pregnant.

The Nixie of the Mill-Pond and Other European Stories by Kel McDonald

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Do not judge a book by the cover is probably the first thing I learned about books. However, sometimes you can, sometimes not and sometimes there are books that you do both. The Nixie of the Mill-Pond and Other European Stories is one of those books that you think you know what is going on (there will be a Nixie, which looks like a mermaid/banshee/fairy, that will do something in a mill-pond) but open it up and there is something completely different. On page one we […]

When the city’s fate rests in the hands of enemies: Parts 2 & 3

The Nameless City V02 The Stone Heart by Faith Erin Hicks

The Nameless City V03 The Divided Earth by Faith Erin Hicks

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The Nameless City is a trilogy that (if you are like me) should probably be read back-to-back. I was lucky and able to read all three with little break between one and two (and two and three the same day). Yet, a few things I had to backtrack and try to remember, “Okay who are you again?” or “What did you do?” However, the reader aged 10 to 14 should have no difficultly remembering everything. And thankfully, all three are out so regardless they can […]



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