Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Popcorn, but gourmet popcorn

The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

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There’s Serious Literature, and then there’s beach reads – popcorn. But sometimes that popcorn is better than average, it’s got a little something extra to elevate it, and that, my friends, is gourmet popcorn. And gourmet popcorn is exactly what The Hawthorne Legacy delivers. As book 2 in a planned trilogy, we pick up only a week or so after book 1, The Inheritance Games, concludes. Our main character, Avery Grambs, is still living at Hawthorne House with the four Hawthorne brothers, and still trying […]

“Books have a soul”

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

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“A book that sits on a shelf is nothing but a bundle of paper. Unless it is opened, a book possessing great power or an epic story is a mere scrap of paper. But a book that has been cherished and loved, filled with human thoughts, has been endowed with a soul.” Rintaro Natsuki, a reclusive high school student, inherits a bookstore when his grandfather passes away. Then a talking cat appears and demands his help in rescuing books from their misguided owners. This was […]

Forty years later, An Open Swimmer stands the test of time

An Open Swimmer by Tim Winton

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Recently I set a goal for myself to read all of Tim Winton’s novels this year; and so I began January with An Open Swimmer, his debut novel, first published in 1982. Jerra is a young man on the cusp of stepping out and beginning his own life, but he has some inner demons to deal with first. It seems like he will keep self sabotaging until he succeeds. In the beginning of the story, he is on a camping trip with his boyhood best […]

The Loftcraftian Horror Genre, a little bit of *magic* and a strong female lead

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Mexican Gothic is a horror genre novel by author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Set in 1950s Mexico, it follows the protagonist Noemi, a socialite who is tasked by her father to find her estranged cousin who hasn’t been since by the family since her wedding to her English husband. Noemi travels to the mountainside Doyle Family home in the fictional El Triunfo (Spanish for The Triumph). Once arriving, Noemi immediately senses that something is off in this house. A dilapidated and isolated mansion covered in grime and […]

WELL ACTUALLY

Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams

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Are you a woman? Do you enjoy REAL MEN explaining things to you that your incompetent little lady brain made you think you understood? Then look no further, because if male condescension is your kink then this book is going to moisten your loins.  It’d also mean you had terrible taste in books, but whatever. I try not to kinkshame.  Weeks after the death of her twin sister Cambry, Lena Nguyen asks officer Raymond Raycevic (the fact that someone thought this was a good name […]

Like a big, warm, adventure hug

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

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January Scaller has never quite fit in anywhere.In the early 1900s, she is a mixed-race almost-orphan. She lives with her enormously wealthy guardian, Mr. Locke, in his house full of treasures, while her father travels the world seeking curiosities for Mr. Locke’s collections. January is an inbetween kind of person, not fitting in fully anywhere, but largely insulated from her own otherness by Mr. Locke’s wealth and status. And then, January finds a book. The book tells the story of doors – doors between worlds, […]



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