Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Down on the farm

Farm Crimes V01: Cracking the Case of the Missing Egg by Sandra Dumais

Farm Crimes V02: the Moo-Sterious Disappearance of Cow by Sandra Dumais

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If Doctor Dolittle and Amelia Bedelia had a child, it would be the Inspector. Columbo looks like Sherlock Holmes in comparison to Van Hoof! To say Inspector Billiam Van Hoof is bumbling is an understatement. But ages six to nine will be rolling in the cow patties laughing at the antics our not-so-heroic hero. In Farm Crimes V01: Cracking the Case of the Missing Egg our hero gets lost on the way to the farm (at the bottom of the hill that he lives on […]

Grandma’s story

When I Was a Fairy by Tom Silson

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Like I said, Nobrow Press is really getting my reading flowing. We have When I Was a Fairy. Like the grandfather and his high-seas tall tales in When I Was a Pirate by Tom Silson we now have a grandmother telling a fairy tale about her youth and when she flew and soared as a fairy. Now, I was okay with the story until the very end. It should have ended about three pages sooner or swapped those last three or so pages. However, it is […]

“Maybe one day I’ll live somewhere and then I’ll have an address and I’ll send you a picture postcard and you can put it in your damn address book, since you seem so damn concerned about it.”

Killing Floor by Lee Child

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My husband has been reading the Jack Reacher series forever, and when the new Amazon series came out, we watched it together. The series is a perfect summer binge – full of action, enough plot to hold things together, but not so much you have to work particularly hard to follow along. I have an upcoming “beach reads” presentation for work, so I thought I’d give the first Jack Reacher book a shot – and it is the perfect beach read. Jack Reacher recently mustered […]

Cannonballers are so smart

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

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I’ve read and liked Robin McKinley, but somehow I managed to miss this one. Then a bunch of Cannonballers were commenting on another McKinley review that Sunshine was the best vampire book they’d ever read. When I found it at a library book sale, I was super psyched, and I was not disappointed. Rae Seddon (get it? Rae of Sunshine?) is a baker at a coffee shop. (So many descriptions of baked goods in this book. Drool.) Her stepfather owns the coffee shop, her mother […]

Feral and Ferocious: Two Plays About Girls

The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe

Dance Nation by Clare Barron

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The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe In the not-so-distant past, I performed frequently in small professional theatre productions. I’m a slightly-less-than 5’ tall woman, so I was often cast as teen and early-twenties characters, and I always had an eye out for plays that I could potentially pull monologues from for auditions. When The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, a play about a high school girls’ indoor soccer team, started making waves and eventually was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer, it seemed like it could be […]

“[She] knew that this was her life. Better to be immersed in it than to see it from afar.”

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

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I really enjoy this book and I think this is my second or third time reading it. Some Luck follows the Langdon family, who start off as farmers in Iowa. Each chapter is one year in their lives, and that concept makes this book very readable, as it moves along at a fast pace. This is the first book in a trilogy and covers 1920 to 1953. I think the thing that makes this book more than a gimmick is Jane Smiley’s beautiful prose — there are […]



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