Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“No one ever believes me when I tell them my uncle Earl owns a museum.”

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

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This is very readable and I’m glad I picked it up randomly at Barnes & Noble, but it didn’t live up to my hopes. I enjoyed Paladin’s Grace so much that I figured I’d see how Kingfisher did at horror. The Hollow Places follows Kara as she tries to recover from her recent divorce. She comes back to her small hometown to live with her uncle, who runs the Wonder Museum, full of taxidermy, Bigfoot memorabilia, and a picture of the Pope made of sunflower […]

A Great Collection of Short Horror Stories

Full Throttle by Joe Hill

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Any book I buy twice is a good one, and Full Throttle lived up to my recollections as fast-paced, fun reading. This book collects of a bunch of Joe Hill’s short stories, and it’s a great representation of his work. Two stories in here are co-written with his father, but the bulk of the collection is Hill’s work alone, and he really knows how to write. Someone once said that Hill writes better King than King does, which is debatable, but I tore through this […]

October 2022 Leftovers

Batman: The Impostor by Mattson Tomlin

The Son by Jo Nesbø

Killer Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury

The Devil's Wedding Ring by Vidar Sundstøl

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Happy belated Halloween to all who observe! Again, I don’t have as many leftovers as I did in recent months since I’m logging so many full reviews for the Book Bingo. But here’s what I got, all of them quality 4-star reads…   Batman: The Impostor Really enjoyed this one. A fresh take, helped by the fact that Batman is surrounded by characters with no history. Jim Gordon is off the force. Alfred has forsaken him (or vice versa). No Joker, no Riddler, Penguin functions […]

That’s a nice tree

Deborah’s Tree by Jane Yolen

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Deborah’s Tree by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Cosei Kawa is a picture book that has multiple layers. It is a book on religion and women’s history. I knew the name Deborah was biblical but did not know the history of the woman behind the story. Deborah was a female judge. In fact, the only one the bible mentions. We follow Deborah from a child to an adult. We see her visions (let us put divine intervention aside for the moment and I will say […]

Don’t mess with an angry gingerbread cookie!

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

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I really adored A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. This charming young adult fantasy novel was so much fun to read. A shout out to the YA librarian who mentioned how much she had loved this book. Mona is a 14 year old baker who has some limited magic capabilities. She can do things like make gingerbread cookies dance. One day, she finds a dead girl in the bakery and it turns out all magickers in her town are being targeted and […]

The Dinner

The Dinner by Herman Koch

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An unremarkable couple stand in an unremarkable pub drinking unremarkable beer. Their names are Paul and Claire. They’re bracing themselves, for they are about to go to dinner with Paul’s brother Serge and his wife Babette. Serge is a rising star in national politics, primed for the position of PM after the elections, which are only six months away. Paul has picked the restaurant (mere mortals will need to book months in advance but they keep a table back for ‘people like me’), for they […]



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