Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I’m human like everybody else. It’s just that I’m so tired, so worn out, I can’t feel anymore.”

Passing by Nella Larsen

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Passing is about pretense, jealousy, psychological ambiguity, concealment, and duplicity. The messiness of being human s portrayed in the relationship between two women, Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. It is through this narrative that Larsen suggests that both racial and gender/sexual identities are as much artifice as they are intrinsic. Larsen is specific in the manner that she portrays her characters. The mechanics of the writing – and its brevity – are significant indicators of the level of craft on display. Larsen is doing big […]

“Now, turn down the lights, flip the page, take my hand, and start the dance…”

Turn Down the Lights by Edited by Richard Chizmar

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I continue my efforts to read through the books that have been sitting on my shelves for years. Turn Down the Lights is a collection of short horror and thriller/suspense/crime stories from the long-running magazine Cemetery Dance. Chizmar started the magazine in college and also runs a small press that publishes a variety of genre novels. I got this due to the fact that Stephen King and Chizmar have a long-standing relationship, and the first story in this collection is by King. Then it sat […]

Honestly, I don’t know where to start.

The Warlord Wants Forever by Kresley Cole

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That’s a lie. I know exactly where I should start. Seventh Grade, that’s where. It was the 1988-89 school year. I was attending a magnet school in New Orleans that went 7th-12th grade. It looked like a gothic art deco birthday cake surrounded by live oak trees. There was even a Catholic girls school across the street. Of course it was unairconditioned – the terrazzo floors were literally slimy much of the year. I’m not sure it gets much more New Orleans than that school. […]

STEM romance novella

Under One Roof by Ali Hazelwood

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After we read The Love Hypothesis for book club, I found a trio of novellas also by Ali Hazelwood. I quickly decided that I needed to read these as well. So, now that I’ve finished Below Zero and Stuck With You, I was able to get Under One Roof (2022) by Hazelwood on audiobook. Like Hazelwood’s other books, Under One Roof involves a woman in STEM–Mara, an environmental engineer who works for the EPA–a hunky man, misunderstandings, and love in the end. Mara is best friends with the women who starred in the previous […]

“Words define us, they explain us, and, on occasion, they serve to control or isolate us.”

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

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The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020) by Pip Williams was chosen by my book club. I began this book with high expectations. It has 4.4 stars on Amazon, and is a New York Times bestseller. The blurb stated that this book is: “[d]elightful…[a] captivating and slightly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on The Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.” Well, I love reading and words and feminist literature, so I figured this was right up my alley. Esme is a young girl being cared […]

A servicable sophomore entry in the series

The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

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BINGO – Series The second installation in The Inheritance Games Series is The Hawthorne Legacy. This book picks up almost immediately after the events of the first book which makes sense. Avery has to live in her newly inherited house for a full year with minimal interruption in order to secure the inheritance she was given by a stranger just a few weeks prior. The games of the first book have served their purpose: the grandsons of the Hawthorne family have aired their grievances and secrets […]



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