Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Taut, Gripping, and Totally Twisted

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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The friends who recommended Rory Power’s Wilder Girls to me sure know how to get my attention. “Gripping queer relationships and teen girls being badasses!” said one. “You’ll love this, it reminds me so much of that show Yellowjackets that you won’t stop talking about,” raved another. Well, that sealed the deal. Wilder Girls takes place entirely on the fictional Raxter Island off the coast of Maine, primarily at the Raxter School for Girls. The all-girls boarding school is now under complete quarantine because of a mysterious […]

Sequel love

Heartstopper: Volume Two by Alice Oseman

Asadora! V03 by Naoki Urasawa

Magical History Tour #9: The Titanic by Fabrice Erre

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It is rare a sequel is as good as the first. However, sometimes there is one that you like even more “just because” you do. Maybe it is because the character is your favorite, or maybe it is because you relate to the character, or the author really got into the story and is moving things along. These three books may or may not better than the first, but they are just as good. I was able to relate to Nick in Heartstopper: Volume Two. […]

“There was so much to think about if you just gave yourself time … “

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

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Do you think much about life in Iowa? I actually think I DO think about life in Iowa more than might be assumed – I don’t live that far from Iowa, and I used to do some pretty regular work traveling from St. Louis to Lincoln and Omaha and other small towns scattered around Nebraska. Sometimes, driving to Nebraska we’d get close to or even pass through Iowa for a brief period of time. Although these trips had very little to do with my day […]

Weirdos, teenagers, degenerates, and women

Ship It by Britta Lundin

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“Real writing” is done by serious people, whereas fanfiction is written by weirdos, teenagers, degenerates, and women.” This is a comics convention. When did this industry start caring about what fourteen-year-old girls like? Have you ever found a book that feels as if it was written just for you? From the first two chapters, I was in love with this book. Small town girl – Check. Self-identified outcast – Check. Obsessed over a band or a show or a movie to the point of writing […]

This is a Scalzi book, end of message

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

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The Kaiju Preservation Society is intended to be 100% escapist, lightweight fun for the reader, and it certainly succeeds at that. I read the whole thing on my first plane flight since 2020, and it went down easy. The protagonist, Jamie Gray, is working as a food delivery driver in the early months of the pandemic when he gets recruited by an old friend to staff an “animal rights organization.” Given the title of the book you may guess approximately what comes next. It turns […]

Compendium of Robert Heinlein

The Menace from Earth by Robert A Heinlein

Assignment in Eternity by Robert A Heinlein

Red Planet by Robert A Heinlein

For Us, the Living by Robert A Heinlein

Between Planets by Robert A Heinlein

Farmer in the Sky by Robert A Heinlein

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The Menace from Earth – 3/5 Stars – Like a lot of science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein just wrote and published tons of stories. Some of them are good and some of them are not, and a lot of them were published with pseudonyms. This collection was edited and revised and republished in the 1990s in order to keep those Heinlein monies going. The collection is a mixed bag, and generally have the the opposite problem of the novels. The novels are often way weirder […]



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