Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Wager by David Grann

The Wager; A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

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Format in which I consumed this book: audiobook Did I like it/love it/hate it? Liked it What’s it about? In the 1740s, a British ship sets sail to try to capture a Spanish galleon filled with treasure. They fail, and become shipwrecked on an island near Argentina and Chile. In the months that follow, the crew and leadership divide into factions and struggle to survive. They manage to scavenge items from their ship and the author sort of makes it seem like they had a […]

“She was a half-wild thing of ink and grass and sea breezes, raised by books and rabbits and fairy lore, and that was all she cared to be.”

The Magician's Daughter by H. G. Parry

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Biddy lives on a small, magically isolated island off the coast of Ireland with her guardian/foster father, Rowan, and his familiar, the rabbit Hutchincroft. No one who doesn’t know that it’s there can find it. While Biddy has no magic of her own, she has grown up with it all around her. Yet magic is fading in the outside world, and far too often, Rowan has to leave Biddy to go to the mainland in bird form to find some small reserves of it. She […]

“I have everything I ever wanted–and it tastes just as delicious as I always imagined.”

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

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I love an unreliable narrator. Whether they are divorced from reality à la Montresor of “The Cask of Amontillado,” deceiving themselves as a defense against trauma, like Pi in Life of Pi, or intentionally deceiving the reader, as in many mysteries I won’t name to avoid spoilers. . .I just can’t get enough of them. What intrigues me about June Hayward (aka Juniper Song) in Yellowface is I’m never certain how much of her own press she buys into. She definitely believes she’s been screwed […]

A lovely choice for Mother’s Day but get your hankies out

Foster by Claire Keegan

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This novel, which is barely 100 pages long, packs an emotional wallop. Set in rural coastal Ireland, Foster is the story of an unnamed girl, age unknown (I’m guessing 7 or 8-ish), who abruptly finds herself living with an aunt and uncle one summer. In these few pages, Claire Keegan beautifully reveals the pain and longing of this child and of her relatives, and the roots of each. The novel opens with this girl and her father getting in the car on a Sunday morning […]

I agree; The Tempest is a horrible play to perform on an ocean voyage.

A Sea Change: A Shadowhunters Novella by Cassandra Clare

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Most people on their travels are looking for something; either to run towards, or as an option to go run from their troubles to. But not Shadowhunter (bisexual, recovering alcoholic, and general mess) Matthew Fairchild and his loyal (and here mostly when the plot requires him) golden retriever, Oscar Wilde. No. Matthew is searching for himself aboard the Majestic, a grand 19th century ocean liner sailing from Greece to Constantinople, where he’s meeting his parabatai James Herondale, and James’s wife Cordelia.  (Luckily it’s the Black […]

“Emotion check: Having someone else support your bad decisions feels kind of good”

Platform Decay: Murderbot Diaries Book 8 by Martha Wells

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This latest Murderbot installment is short (150 pages) but full of the snark and excitement one has come to expect from the series. It is missing the usual cast of characters (including my favorite ART) but it introduces some new ones and of course focuses on everyone’s favorite SecUnit. The action of Platform Decay occurs on a torus, that is, a space station ring surrounding a decaying planet. The torus is man-made and contains a variety of biomes, mining and farming zones, habitation areas and […]



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