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.

 

Blessed are the dumbfucks

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

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I first encountered this book about a decade ago. At the time, I was very Mormon and very anxious; I was aware of a lot of the problems in my lifelong faith, but terrified to face them head-on. Lamb was in the Librarian’s Choice display at the local library, and the cover art reminded me a little bit of the Discworld books, so I picked it up. As I skimmed, I was equally intrigued and horrified. A fictional book about Jesus? A comedic book about Jesus? With swears […]

What kind of pastry are you?

The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

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It’s cold outside my friends. Let’s snuggle up under the covers with a cup of something warm and this lovely cozy fantasy. I think I’d be a simple chocolate brownie, super sweet and delightfully squishy. Tao is a traveling fortune teller, drifting from village to village in a wagon pulled by her trusty mule Laohu. It’s a solitary life made less lonely when a small fortune causes a former thief and an ex-mercenary to join her in her travels as they search for a lost […]

So good, so far

So Far So Good by Ursula K LeGuin

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I’ve never really gotten poetry or Ursula K LeGuin. I have nothing against either, they just weren’t for me… until So Far So Good, LeGuin’s last work. I knew signing up for a reading challenge would take me outside of my reading comfort zone, which is fine. Outside of my comfort zone is rarely uncomfortable (with reading). The worst is usually just uninteresting, the best is a bigger comfort zone. The challenge (storygraph’s 2025 genre challenge) was a nature poetry collection and I have enough […]

It’s Morphin’ Time! (Animorphing, that is)

The Invasion by K. A. Applegate

The Visitor by K. A. Applegate

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I was fourteen when The Animorphs debuted, and it never crossed my path. It’s possible I was outgrowing its target age range (though I think teens did read and would still read this series). But it’s more likely that I didn’t read it because I thought I didn’t like science fiction. I thought this despite the fact that A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite rereads, despite loyally watching SeaQuest DSV (even if my loyalty was more for the Jonathan Brandis of it […]

“Demi-human, seek knowledge and grow wise.”

The Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms by Nagabe

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First book of the year! This is a volume of short stories set in the same wizarding school for anthropomorphic animals (The Wizdom’s School of Wizarding). A long time ago, a wizard gave animals “the shape and intellect of a human,” creating demi-humans who now go to this wizarding school. The stories are all BL themed, although some of them just have a heavily flirty atmosphere or touch upon homoerotic themes instead of all of the characters ending up in romantic relationships. I enjoyed the […]

The Message

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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My first book of 2025 (I actually began reading it on 12/30/24) and it Is a doozy. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message is primarily interested in the ways that language shapes power and resistance. The introductory section, “Journalism Is Not a Luxury,” addresses just that: the essential role in language and journalism, recording history, in fighting injustice. Coates addresses an unnamed “you” in this section, but this part seems to serve as a thesis statement about writing: “You cannot act upon what you cannot see. And […]



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