Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Intentions always look better on paper than in reality.”

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

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Another review of a Book Club choice, 2017’s The Hate U Give. A peek behind the scenes: this one almost got left off the voting, having been popular over the years but as it’s the 30th most challenged book of the decade 2010-2019 and the fifth most challenged in 2021 the argument to include it felt justified. This YA novel was challenged and banned in school libraries and curriculums because it was considered “pervasively vulgar” and because of drug use, profanity, and offensive language. Other […]

“The world changed faster than I could”

Don't Cry For Me by Daniel Black

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BINGO – Minds (the narrator reflects at the end of his life in the various ways that he has changed his mind on certain truths he once believed) Jacob is dying. He knows that his time is almost up, but he has some things to resolve, namely with his son Isaac. In a series of letters to his son Isaac, Jacob tries to go back to the very beginning of his life and explain where he comes from, where their family has roots, how his […]

You’ll never look at mushrooms the same way…

The Unfamiliar Garden by Benjamin Percy

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I broke one of my personal reading rules with this book – always read a series in order. The Unfamiliar Garden is book two in The Comet Cycle…which, in my defense, I didn’t realize when I started reading it. But luckily for me, the stories in the Comet Cycle seem to be more interrelated than sequential. In this world, there was a comet. It came close enough to Earth to be amazing, but not close enough to hit. A year goes by, and the Earth’s […]

Meet Booger Lizk’t of Elberon or Tommy Tomkins to you

Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy by Jonathan Hill

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I finished this book in a day, starting at the dentist, finishing as I enjoyed some cold pizza (shh don’t tell my dentist) from dinner, and it became a new favorite.  Granted, Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy might not be an OMG BEST BOOK EVER, but I really enjoyed how we take the being different theme and make it (while specific to our hero Tommy) a generic idea. That is a favorite thing about science fiction/fantasy. You take the Idea You Want to Present […]

Electra Complex

Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter by Lizzie Pook

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CBR 14 Bingo: Bird Birds populate the landscape of this book – and Eliza’s father is prophesied to be found in a white place surrounded by many birds. When Eliza’s father’s ship returns from a pearling expedition without him, everyone but her seems to accept that he is dead. But Eliza is certain there is more to the story, and she is determined to find him. I am rather annoyed with this book. It was so relentlessly depressing, and once I had gotten through the […]

A’s Midsummer’s Night’s Dream’s

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

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What fools these mortals be! And also what dicks these immortals be, well Puck and Oberon at least. In this Shakespeare comedy, we find four young Athenian nobles trying to sort out their possible marriages. Their parents are making wrong choices or choices that only adhere to the parent’s political and financial desires, and not the love of the young people. Everything all mixed up, they decide to run away. The find their way into the woods where they are found sleeping by Oberon, king […]



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