Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Biography of Remus J. Lupin

All the Young Dudes by MsKingBean89

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All the Young Dudes is a work of Harry Potter inspired fanfic that focuses on the relationship between Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, making it what is known as a “Wolfstar” story. Apparently, it is the #1 download on Archive of Our Own (AO3). I first heard about it a couple of weeks ago in this Slate piece, which raved about it. At 188 chapters (and some half a million pages) it is, they say, half as long as all 7 HP novels, and readers, […]

“Why, oh, why did you have to give birth to a son who hasn’t given us a moment’s peace since the day he was born?” 

The Great Brain by John D Fitzgerald

More Adventures of the Great Brain by John D Fitzgerald

Me and My Little Brain by John D Fitzgerald

The Great Brain at the Academy by John D Fitzgerald

The Great Brain Reforms by John D Fitzgerald

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I know I have written about this magical place before, but I need to reiterate that for a kid who loved to read, there was no greater place on earth than The New England Mobile Book Fair. It was a huge wholesale book warehouse in my hometown, and my mom’s favorite place to go. While she browsed the aisles looking for paperbacks by Ngaio Marsh, Barbara Pym, Dorothy Sayers, and MC Beaton, I would sit on the concrete floor, way in the back corner of […]

“A lifetime of lies that started out small, life a nick in the windshield, then eventually shattered the glass.”

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson

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A book about lies that come from good intentions, the harm they can cause, and the power to overcome them, all in the context of living in America while Black. Plot: Ruth grew up in a poor factory Indiana town she couldn’t wait to get away from. When she won a full ride scholarship to Yale, she knew that was her way out. Then she got pregnant. The baby was given up for adoption and Ruth moved on. Now a chemical engineer and happily married […]

“You know life goes on after pain, and… well, it goes on before pain too, or around it, or generally proximate.”

The Stormbringer by Isabel Cooper

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I first heard about this book over on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, when they mocked the cover. They are, of course, entirely right. It is not only a generally not great cover, but it also completely fails to clue the reader into the smart, funny, inventive, sweet fantasy epic that they’re about to delve into. It’s described as a paranormal romance but if this is a paranormal romance so is Lord of the Rings and the Witcher. Plot: There is a war between humans and […]

“Love is a gift, and wanting to love things is a bigger gift”

The Devil Comes Courting by Courtney Milan

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Courtney Milan is a treasure and frankly, this book should be mandatory reading in school. How are Hemingway and JD Salinger and all those other Sad White Dudes mandatory reading and this goddamn treasure of a human being is not? Plot: Amelia, a Chinese girl of six is adopted by British missionaries in Shanghai after the Taiping Rebellion. She is intensely bright and curious and all the things a good daughter of missionaries is not, but she tries so hard to be good, even if […]

Let’s spend a little of your hard-earned Christmas book buying budget on some books we wished we could have read as children.

What if, Pig? by Lizzie Hunter

Dad & The Dinosaur by Gennifer Choldenko

Captain Starfish by Davinia Bell

You've Got Dragons by Kathryn Cave

When You Are Brave by Pat Zietlow Miller

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AKA Why this week’s library haul had me in tears. There’s a lot to go over in this review, so I’m bear with me: There’s a reason these books are together like this, I promise. Dad & The Dinosaur by Gennifer Choldenko –Nicholas isn’t brave like his dad: He’s afraid of all sorts of things, like bugs, & darkness, & manhole covers.  But he has a secret weapon: A dinosaur that “likes the dark, bugs are nothing to them, and they eat manhole covers for […]



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