Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

In Many Ways, Very Necessary

The Afterlife of Malcolm X by Mark Whitaker

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I first encountered the legend Malcolm X when I was in fifth grade. At my lily-white elementary school, my–a rarity in my hometown–black male teacher distributed a list of names to his predominantly white students and asked each to choose a name for a report. This was fifth grade and in the late 1980s; we were beginning to learn about black history, and it was February–Black History Month. The mimeographed list came to me, and I chose Malcolm X. I’d never before heard of him; […]

Refreshingly good

Kingdom, vol. 1-2 by Yasuhisa Hara

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It felt good to read the first 2 volumes of Kingdom by Yasuhisa Hara after a lot of junk food books. It reminded me a lot of Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, so I was not surprised to see Hara worked as Inoue’s assistant in the past. In ancient China, two boys named Xin and Piao are best friends and slaves with ambitious goals to be great generals – the only path out of slavery* for them and their wives and children. Not that they have […]

An Adults Only Lord of the Flies

Batavia by Peter FitzSimons

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The Batavia, the pride of the Dutch East India Company, is on its maiden voyage from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies when it wrecks off just off the coast of western Australia. But the tragedy of the Batavia stems not from the forces of nature, but from the evil in men’s hearts. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about this story in the last couple years, and was so curious about this strange, dark story, part survival story and part true crime, that I decided […]

Lincoln Viewed through the Power of Melancholy

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled his Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk

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This new to me biography of Lincoln focuses on his depressive temperament, how he and his contemporaries viewed that temperament, and what modern-day readers can learn from Lincoln’s life and outlook. Shenk lays the groundwork for this book by observing that the labeling of psychological phenomena can be helpful, but also artificially limiting. “Language doesn’t just name a reality; it creates a reality.” Going to talk about how Lincoln has been viewed throughout history, including as bipolar and depressed, Shenk states that “such retrospective diagnoses […]

This standalone fantasy goes incredibly hard.

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao

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Sending up the Bat Signal on this book, my first use of it this year. (FYI the last time I used it was with The Raven Scholar, my best book of 2025, so you know it’s serious.) I wouldn’t recommend this book as widely or as often as I have The Raven Scholar, but for a certain type of reader, this thing will hit hard. (As it hit me. Last night, crying softly on my couch as I opined to myself, IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL.) First […]

A Well-Realized World in a Small Package

The Black God's Drums by P. Djeli Clark

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I’m starting to really love P. Djèlí Clark’s writing. This is the second book I’ve read by him, and I liked it even more than Ring Shout, which is surprising because it’s rare for me to give a novella more than 4 stars (4.25 for this one). Often I find that characters don’t end up getting fleshed out enough for me, and while I would have loved more of The Black God’s Drums, Clark did a remarkable job considering the limited space he was working with. […]



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