Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When Satire Isn’t

Severance by Ling Ma

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I wonder what it was like to read this book pre-COVID. Because I can tell you that reading it now, six years after COVID hit, it’s not as satirical as perhaps the author intended. In Severance, the deadly virus definitively originates in China and makes sort-of zombies (not the brain-eating kind) from the infected. Other than that difference, this book is spookily prescient. So much so that I had to keep re-checking the original publication date, but, yeah, Severance was first published in August of […]

“The fun is in the taking. Why haven’t you killed the Hunter?”

The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains by Reena McCarty

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In one of my online groups, folks started talking about Reena McCarty’s The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains. Being currently poor, I put it on hold at my library. I had some expectations based on the title, but I quickly learned that Faerie Bargains is more than faerie adventures but with lawyers and insurance companies. For one thing, the writing is gorgeously descriptive making the reading experience feel lush. I could see the world around Poppy. The tree’s roots arched up over the water, an […]

Three extremely different books about space

Otherworldly by Dwain Worrell

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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I’m being lazy and combining these three VERY DIFFERENT BOOKS because Space! I read Otherworldly and Project Hail Mary as ebooks, and Atmosphere as an audiobook. Otherworldly first! So, one of my favorite book genres is space horror. My list of fears (to read or watch a movie / TV show about) is not very long. Deep down in the ocean scares me to bits, and so does outer space. I think they’re similar in that once you’re there, you’re at the mercy of however […]

Damon Salvatore and gladiators

We Who Will Die by Stacia Stark

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I have started a few books in the last month or two that I fully intend to finish but they aren’t quite holding my attention and I keep starting new books rather than going back to them. So I feel like I have been struggling to get through novels but then I look back over my recent reads and realize, it’s not been that bad. Anyway, I was both interested in this book and skeptical because sometimes the booktok hype is just too much. However, […]

The Hubris and Entitlement of Alchemists

Inkpot Gods by Seanan McGuire

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I have read most of what Seanan McGuire has written, including under her pen name Mira Grant, so of course I jumped at Netgalley’s offer of an ARC of Inkpot Gods, the fourth of her Alchemical Journeys novels (she also did a spin off of this series, writing some of the often referenced children’s books that alchemist Asphodel Deborah Baker used to share her studies in plain sight). As far as I am tracking, this series is intended to be five books total, and this […]

To Be Young, Bewildered, and Black

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

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Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry, whose famous aphorism popped into my head more than once while I was reading The Wilderness.  Flournoy has given us a portrait of young Black women’s struggle to make meaning, starting in their twenties and progressing to middle age. These women are, indeed, gifted in many ways, but it doesn’t spare them the journey we all take from youth to maturity. Their Blackness means the challenges are different, and sometimes greater. “Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness” by mypubliclands is licensed under CC BY […]



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