Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sequels get the job done

Clash (Click, #4) by Kayla Miller

Gina: The Girl Who Broke the World (Hilo #7) by Judd Winick

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Sequels are interesting parts of an author’s catalog. Sometimes you like them, and sometimes not. Sometimes they are too much like the others and therefore, you fall out with them as they have nothing new to say. And sometimes they are what keeps us reading. And two series that have been all that for me, are below. Clash (Click, #4) by Kayla Miller is more of the same goodness we love about these characters in the Click series.  Only this time, we are dealing with […]

The author might be hiding away in Donegal, but these books are not!

The Deepest Breath by Meg Grehan

The Space Between by Meg Grehan

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Meg Grehan came on my radar recently with Baby Teeth. I was intrigued for many reasons; I had read another book titled Baby Teeth and wondering how it compared. I was interested as the cover was romantic, old fashioned, but screamed modern. The colors were both perfect and overly done at first glance. And finally, it was a novel in verse, and I am always curious to see if they read as poetry or flow as a novel. And while it was not my OMG […]

Page-turner mystery series alert

Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood

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Fortune Favors the Dead is the first book in the “Pentecost and Parker” mystery series. If you like a little bit of Sherlock Holmes and a little bit of hard-boiled noir, this could be the series for you! The Pentecost half of the series is the (in)famous NYC private detective, Ms. Pentecost. Ms. Pentecost is a 1940s Sherlock Holmes – she is hyper-observant, obsessive, and perhaps a little uncaring of her crime-solving crew at times. She is more interested in justice than anything else. Even […]

You Can’t Take it With You

You Can't Take it With You by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart

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This is a slapstick and sentimental play from 1936 by Moss Hart and George S Kaufman. Kaufman is most famous for this play, along with co-writing with Hart, Edna Ferber, and Ring Lardner at various times for plays and adaptations. He’s also probably the main character model for Barton Fink. Moss Hart is known writing the book Act One and for being married to Kitty Carlisle. The play begins in a house full of an eccentric family. The mom is a painter! The grandfather says […]

Tonio Kroger and Mario and the Magician

Tonio Kroger by Thomas Mann

Mario and the Magician by Thomas Mann

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Tonio Kroger – Tonio Kroger (short for Antonio) is a dark-haired German lad when we begin this novella. We learn soon thereafter that his father is from the far North (Norway it seems) and his mother is from Southern clime (Spain or Italy it seems). In the opening scene, school has just let out and Tonio has had a planned walk home with Hans, a close friend. We find out through Tonio’s anxiety that it looks as it Hans has maybe forgotten the appointment, or […]

Hellman’s Spicy Mayo

Maybe by Lillian Hellman

The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman

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Maybe – 3/5 Stars Maybe is a short novella, and possibly the only in Hellman’s career. It’s hard to know exactly what the book is because it’s written as a mini-biography circulating around a specific interaction. Normally I wouldn’t think too much about this distinction but Hellman wrote three quite famous and quite popular memoirs later in her career, so this little book coming out about 10 years later and just two years before she died raises a few small questions. The book itself begins […]



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