Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I am the one thing you can never kill. I am hope.”

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

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I’m taking a break from my Diana Wynne Jones challenge to read different fantasy. Thanks to my wonderful Book Exchange partner, I was gifted the full Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson and have been chomping at the bit to dig into it. I lost a lot of sleep over this book, it was just too good to only read for a half hour before bed, and as dense and heavy as Sanderson often is, this book blew by. Mistborn introduces us to the Final Empire, a pseudo […]

“I wanted the children I taught to know that they, too, could be worthy of featuring in a novel.”

Mine for Keeps by Jean Little

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This book is a delight. Jean Little was a Canadian author who wrote over 50 children’s books, and her books often center on disabled characters. Little herself was legally blind from birth, and I think that the delicacy and realism of her novels really come through as a result of her own experiences. Mine for Keeps was her first children’s novel, which I just found out when doing research for this review, but it doesn’t seem like it’s uncertain or unpolished at all. It’s very confident […]

“My fertile years are waning, my chance at love has passed, my cat is my greatest asset”

The Arc by Tory Henwood Hoen

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Warning for major spoilers in the sixth paragraph. Going in I figured this was not an actual romance novel, and I was right. This is more of a satire with a strong romantic element. While it definitely does an amazing job with the satire part, at times I was confused at to what point exactly the author was trying to make. “My fertile years are waning, my chance at love has passed, my cat is my greatest asset,” she thought. There are some absolutely brilliant […]

The Old Hotel

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

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Elderly widow Laura Palfrey, unable to live on her own and unwilling to live with her crass daughter in Scotland, checks into the Claremont Hotel. There she finds a community of sorts among the other elderly residents, who pass their days in desultory conversations between mealtimes and waiting, mostly in vain, for their relatives to visit. When Mrs. Palfrey takes a nasty fall on her daily walk, she is rescued by Ludo Myers, a writer living in a shabby basement apartment near the hotel. The […]

Dark Fairies, Light Fairies, and Dublin Adventures

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

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The first novel in the long-running Fever series from Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever introduces us to the world of MacKayla “Mac” Lane. A naive young woman from small-town Georgia, Mac leaves her safe home to travel to Dublin after her older sister is murdered there while studying abroad at Trinity College. Arriving in Dublin, Mac is shocked to learn that her sister has been behaving strangely – not attending classes, avoiding friends, losing weight, and generally acting out of character. On the way home from her sister’s […]

Because I found two new books, I’m writing a three book review

Paper Planes by Jim Helmore

In a Jar by Deborah Marcero

Out of a Jar by Deborah Marcero

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Several of the books I have read deal with a friend moving a serious distance. And Paper Planes starts off as that kind of story. And like In a Jar by Deborah Marcero the solution is a lot simpler than our child narrators feel is possible. In Paper Planes by Jim Helmore, Mia and Ben are best friends who do everything together. And while they like watching the geese fly, and swinging together, they love making airplanes and hope someday to make one that will […]



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