Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Welcome to the Treaty Stay at Gertrude Hunt

Sweep with Me by Ilona Andrews

by Leave a Comment

Spoiler warning! This is the fifth story in the Innkeeper Chronicles series, and this review may contain spoilers for previous installments. If you want to start at the beginning, Clean Sweep is the first book. For Innkeepers, the biggest and most sacred holiday of the year is the Treaty Stay, which commemorates the ancient treaty between the first Inns, their intergalactic guests, and the agreement to keep humans safe and completely unaware of the presence of alien visits to Earth. During a Treaty Stay, Inns have to open the doors […]

“If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you.”

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

by Leave a Comment

Never have truer words been spoken! This collection of short stories crept around my periphery for some time, and I am both overjoyed to have finally given in to it and disappointed in myself for not biting earlier. I came across it originally on a list of fairy-tale retellings on Autostraddle, and when it popped up again in the employee recommendations section of one of my favorite booksellers (Crow Bookshop in Burlington, what’s up!) I knew that it was meant to be. Still, it sat […]

Little demons everywhere

Unsung Heroine by Sarah Kuhn

by Leave a Comment

Official book description: Lucy Valdez is many things: fight trainer/bodyguard to superheroines, fabulous vintage fashion plate, undisputed karaoke queen at local joint, The Gutter. She is also one of the toughest fighters in all of San Francisco without superpowers. So why can’t she seem to confess her feelings to her longtime crush Rose Rorick, head of the San Francisco Police Department’s Demon Unit? Well…. actually, she knows why. She’s afraid Rose won’t like the real Lucy, the Lucy underneath all the fabulous bravado. (She is […]

Seriously, Patrick is the worst

by 2 Comments

This was a book that my third grade teacher read to our class every day after we got in from lunch. I remember how we listened to my teacher’s every word about Omri, a boy who is gifted a magical medicine cabinet that brings plastic toys to life. We couldn’t wait until the next day to realize the resolution of each chapter’s cliffhanger. So it seemed a great choice to read to my 7 year old son. But would a second reading, more than 30 […]

If only I had read this when it came out.

The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

by 5 Comments

I have probably tried reading this book three times over the years, and I was never able to make it far. For my first attempt, I tried the audiobook but didn’t like the narrator. The second time, I forgot that I tried reading it before, and still didn’t like the narrator. The third time, I tried reading the actual book – but had to slog through the part I had previously read, because it had been long enough that I didn’t remember the story well […]

Short story review dump (Part III)

Mono no aware by Ken Liu

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

The Hofzinser Club by Michael Chabon

The Baboon War by Nnedi Okorafor

Childfinder by Octavia E. Butler

The Five-Forty-Eight by John Cheever

by Leave a Comment

Mono no Aware by Ken Liu (5 stars) Mono no aware is a Japanese phrase meaning “the pathos of things”. It’s the bittersweet feeling of sadness at the impermanence of things, a careful blend of appreciation and sadness that nothing can last forever. It’s the phrase I didn’t know that I needed in my life – but I think I do, because I experience it fairly often. I think it’s one of the reasons I love Haruki Murakami’s work so much. There is a delicate […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo