Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

St. Oscars world

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente.

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I did not think I would like the short novel; The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente. I felt I would never understand it and was going to stop reading as things felt disjointed, the narrator was bouncing all over, and there was stuff that was very off. The book felt like a translation that was not smoothly translated at that. However, once I understood the flow (there was one), the bounces between “really then, then, and now,” plus how reliable the narrative is […]

Floating Dragon

Floating Dragon by Peter Straub

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The introduction to this book written when it was published has Peter Straub explaining that his idea for the novel was to present a scattered narrative and he was looking for a way to present that scattered story in a comprehensible if not cohesive way actually. His model then was Paul Scott’s amazing Raj Quartet, which consists of four main novels about the end of the British Raj in India and one kind of sequel that revisits side characters who stay after the British leave. […]

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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In one word: Staggering Cannonball Read Bingo: Hot I will never recover from the origins of this book. That Mary Shelley started writing it to tell a spooky story on a rainy day AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN is staggering. And that this story has stood the test of time and become such a classic and revisited tale, so much so that I’m re-reading this book that I read when I was 13 because my kid is now reading it at 13? Astounding. So to […]

“Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.”

The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club #3) by Richard Osman

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In one word: Humanity Cannonball Read Bingo: Time Squeeeeeeeal. I LOVE YOU FOREVER RICHARD OSMAN. Never ever ever EVERRRRR stop writing these books or it will break my heart. I couldn’t believe my fortune when I saw this book on the “hot picks” shelf at my library, thus allowing me to skip the line of who knows how many people to get it into my eager hands. Once you pick up an Osman book, time is of the essence, in that you will want to […]

“I will strip away all that you know, all that you love, until you have no shelter but mine.”

Ruin & Rising (Shadow and Bone #3) by Leigh Bardugo

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In one word: Predictable Cannonball Read Bingo: Verse Leigh Bardugo created a detailed YA universe with interesting magical elements, warring factions, and all the trappings of a good fantasy tale; however, my time spent in Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse has been uneven. Though I loved her original duology, this trilogy didn’t do it for me. But I finished it. YAY! Or I should say we finished it, as I read the last half of this novel aloud to my teen. Unbeknownst to me, he still likes […]

Foiling spies and spying foils

The Ministry of Unladylike Activity (2022) by Robin Stevens

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CBR Bingo ‘Font’ square–the title on the cover embeds a cool little plane, a magnifying glass, and a fluttering blackout curtain in its lettering, while the print text inside is interspersed with lists and notes that look like handwriting. Robin Stevens’s ‘Murder Most Unladylike’ series (2014-2021) is rather marvellous; it starts off in a very English boarding school in the early 1930s, where the very English Honourable Daisy Wells befriends Hazel Wong, a new girl from Hong Kong who is trying to find her place […]



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