Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Look for the Bare Necessities! Classic storytelling, talking animals, and a scoop of racism.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

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CBR 14 BINGO: Snake, because snakes figure into multiple stories in this book (Kaa the snake in Mowgli’s stories, and Nag & Nagaina in “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”) The Jungle Book has got to be the classic “Love it AND Hate it” book. On the one hand you get classic storytelling by a Nobel-prize winning author and talking animals. On the other hand, you get to feel uncomfortable in a way that only a 19th-Century white man born under the British Raj in India can make you feel. […]

“Large groups of powerful men have little reason to make change.”

Heartbreaker by Sarah Maclean

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CBR14 Bingo: Heart (it’s right there in the title, and this is a romance) Adelaide Frampton was once the unappreciated daughter of one of the East End’s most notorious criminals, which led her to acquire a number of illegal skills that now come in handy as she frequents London’s high society posing as the unassuming and plain spinster cousin of a duchess. She uses her time on the sidelines of ballrooms and society events to observe and acquire information and can also put her top-notch […]

“You got a promotion with extra responsibilities but without pay or additional benefits.” Mom smiled. “I’m so proud of you. You’re officially a successful adult.”

Ruby Fever by Ilona Andrews

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CBR14 Bingo: New (possibly my most anticipated new book of the year. Could also have been used for Series – last in a series, and Mind – a lot of minds are manipulated by various powers throughout) Spoiler warning! This book finishes off a bunch of storylines that started six books and a novella earlier in Burn for Me. It’s technically the third book in a trilogy, but to fully get the emotional heft of the story, you should have read the whole series up […]

The fun of family

Hide and Shh!: A Not -So-Sneaky Sister Story About Inclusion by Christina Dendy

A Song of Frutas by Margarita Engle

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These books have a loose connecting theme. Not only are they picture books, but they are about things that we might not be exposed to often. I mean A Song of Frutas and Hide and Shh!: A Not -So-Sneaky Sister Story About Inclusion are about the fruit vendors of Cuban, with Spanish words mixed in and two siblings, one who lives with Down Syndrome, finding common ground (and the not exposed to is having a special needs sibling). I grew up with first cousins, a […]

Henry IV parts 1 and 2

Henry IV Part I by William Shakespeare

Henry IV Part II by William Shakespeare

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I know almost nothing about Shakespeare’s history plays, except that we were randomly assigned to read Richard III in tenth grade, and I am entirely grateful to that teacher (for that, and that alone — I never really liked her) for introducing us to the lesser known Shakespeares, even as famous as Richard III is ultimately. If you’re trying to keep your history straight, the earliest of the histories (of England plays) King John appears first, ruling around 1200 during the absence of King Richard. […]

Some Scalzi

The Android's Dream by John Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Travel by Bullet by John Scalzi

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The Android’s Dream – 3/5 This is an early Scalzi, and it’s one of his, sigh, funny books. Sometimes I really like John Scalzi and sometimes I think he’s so annoying. This book is a pretty funny science fiction in general but he still Scalzis all over it. We begin with a secretive meeting between someone who is mentioned as some kind of diplomat getting a piece of experimental technology grafted onto (into) his body. He says he is going to try to fart his […]



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