Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Family are those we wouldn’t be friends with if not related

Memories from Limon by Edo Brenes

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I can understand why people find this graphic novel slow, uninteresting, and only a one or two-rating. However, I can support my five-rating thinking the above as well. Memories from Limon is not an easy read. Not that it is a difficult subject or has something “rough” to it (such as violence, sex, or such), but the personal nature of the tone, the pacing and the illustrations are meant to be taken slowly. There is mention/showing of the grandfathers drinking, and mention of his infidelity, […]

Hope for the future

A Pslam For The Wild Built by Becky Chambers

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Would you like a soothing balm for your mind right now? Dive into another charming book by Becky Chambers – the first in the Monk and Robot series. In this novel, the world has moved past the rise of sentient robots. While machines were once used for all sorts of labor, and the environment was neglected, the world that we are dropped into in this series has moved past that sort of behavior. Robots and humans live separately, and both do their best to avoid […]

The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

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The other day (it’s 2022 by the way) a Republican candidate for office thanked Donald Trump for protecting “white life” and the crowd cheered. Her campaign later said she meant the “right to life” but sometimes you say what you mean, instead of saying what you meant to say. It happens. In rereading The Handmaid’s Tale, I am struck again by how profoundly dishonest Conservatives are. They are trying to preserve white life, and always have been, but they will just lie to your face […]

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

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You are about to read Vel Veeter’s review of Italo Calvino’s 1979 novel If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, when you notice that Vel Veeter has begun their review of the novel in the same style of the opening of the novel. The novel begins with a second-person narrator telling you that you are reading the new novel. As you make your way into the novel, having purchased it, and the novel gets a little subjunctive here by not allowing you to skim the […]

Theophilus North and The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

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Theophilus North – 4/5 Stars This last novel of Wilder’ was written in the 1970s, when he was also in his 70s and would die a few years after. The vantage point of the novel is from about the 1970s, but involves a young man who went to Yale (Wilder went to Yale when he was a young) who gets a leave of absence from his job as a Latin and French tutor at a private boys school and moves to Newport, Rhode Island to […]

Witchy Woman

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman

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This is a prequel to the better known Practical Magic, which I have not yet read.  I am knocking a star off the rating, because it has that slight awkwardness of having to back into a previous opening, by their very nature, an issue with prequels.  The prequel trilogy of Star Wars is a classic example.  But it did make me want to read the original, so mission accomplished, I guess. Magic Lessons covers three generations of a family of witches and their allies.  Their […]



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