Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“…wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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Cbr13bingo Travel This short, internationally acclaimed novel reads like a parable. The Alchemist is the story of a young man, simply known as “the boy”, in his quest to find his treasure. Similar to other literary quests or odysseys, the young man will encounter those who help him as well as obstacles along the way, but it is the internal journey he takes, the things he learns, that matter most. The Alchemist is a very spiritual book that emphasizes the connectedness of all things and […]

They would have gotten away with it too…

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

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CBR13 Bingo: Book Club (the July selection of my fantasy/sci-fi book club here in Oslo. I read it in early June) Official book description: The surviving members of a forgotten teenage detective club (and their dog) must reunite as broken adults to finally solve the terrifying case that ruined them all and sent the wrong man to prison. Scooby Doo and the gang never had to do this! 1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small […]

Another Girl-Gone-Missing for Aficionados of the Genre, but the Conclusion Just Didn’t Work for Me

Little Monsters by Kara Thomas

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I haven’t been as drawn to the YA genre as of late, but picked up this audiobook on a whim regardless. And as it turns out, it was one of the more compelling listens throughout than a lot of what I’ve been getting into these past few months. That is, until the ending: try as it might to have a big, surprising and meaningful drop, it just didn’t have the impact compared to the rest of the twists, turns, and theorizing within the novel. And […]

German Romanticism 101

Immensee by Theodor Storm

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Fun Fact up front: I read this at the lake today, where I cannonballed a few teens to shame and felt very good about myself. Still got it! xD I pulled this out of one of the free book cases and gave it a try, we had to read Storm in school but for some reason never this early novella, which apparently is one of his most famous and often translated ones. I can see why, it’s pretty representative of late German Romanticism/early Realism in […]

I made it through Jordan – Brandon Sanderson is next: The Wheel of Time review (Part VII)

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan

Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

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So, I’ve been reading through the Wheel of Time, for those who haven’t been reading these reviews. I started the series in the late ’90s, and kept up with them through the publication of Crossroads of Twilight. When Crossroads came out in 2003, I was in college and had all but stopped reading for pleasure. It wasn’t until about 2009-10 that I started again. By that point, Robert Jordan had died and Brandon Sanderson had taken over the series. It had been almost a decade […]

Flipping the Script

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

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Willis Wu, the protagonist of Interior Chinatown, sees his whole life as a television show in which he has been relegated to minor parts due to his Asianness rendering him a perpetual Other. He describes himself as a “Generic Asian Man” hoping to work his way all the way up to “Kung Fu Guy,” the highest role he can conceive an Asian man attaining in Hollywood. He and his parents, “Old Asian Man” and “Old Asian Woman,” work together in the Golden Palace restaurant, where […]



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