Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle/I want to ride it where I like

Bike & Trike by Elizabeth Verdick

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During the pandemic, I was in an office by myself due to health issues and not able to wear a mask easily. This made finding random books a tiny bit harder than usual (though, anyone who is a “true book-nerd” knows that we always find a way to find books). However, now that I am back at my regular desk (hello drawers to hide goodies in!) I wander over to the stacks of received books maybe too often. And one day the find was Bike […]

Something Worth Living For

Veronika decides to die by Paulo Coelho

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Veronika, a pretty 24-year-old Slovenian decides to take her life. She survives the suicide attempt and is admitted to the post-Yugoslavian state-of-the-art mental hospital Villette in Ljubljana where she meets the different inhabitants, including a psychiatrist with rather unconventional and probably (definitely) unethical methods. It’s a slightly cliched setup, but I enjoyed the sense of humour in it, the different characters, their distinct personalities and their rather realistic backgrounds. Coelho wrote this based on his own experiences in mental wards and in those life stories […]

Obama and Biden—but they fight crime.

Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer

Hope Rides Again by Andrew Shaffer

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“Barack once told me that, at the end of the day, every one of us is just part of a long-running story. All we can do is try to get our paragraph right.” Joe Biden is lamenting the end of his bromance with former President Obama, the man himself shows up at his house, lurking in the shadows to inform him his address was found in the pocket of a body hit by an Amtrak train. With an unrelenting need for justice, Amtrak Joe sets […]

Tana French needs to write more books

The Trespasser by Tana French

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Tana French is one of my favourite authors. I first discovered her books back in 2013 and I’ve been a fan ever since. The Trespasser was the only one I hadn’t read and I put off reading it for months because she just published a book recently (The Searcher) and who knows when she’ll publish her next one. So I savoured it. I’m normally not a huge fan of detective/murder stories. I find many of them formulaic and lazy and I’ve been burnt enough times […]

“Your horrible apology is accepted.”

Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian

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You like historical romance but wish it had better representation of gender identity? Of course Cat Sebastian is here for you. Plot: Charity has been bounced around from place to place until she found work for the Selby’s, country gentry folk with two young children around her age. They became fast friends, and when Robert, the eldest died, she took on his name and appearance to protect Louisa until her future is secure. It wasn’t too difficult to pull off, since she had already attended […]

A Special kind of lunch

Lailah’s Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story by Reem Faruqi

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Lailah is in a new school in a new country. She misses her old friends, friends who were old enough last year to partake in the fasting of Ramadan. This year, she is deemed old enough by her mother, and wishes she could share her concerns and excitement with those friends. But here at the new school, she is shy and worried no one will understand the importance of this honor. She worries that people will make fun of her and feel sorry when she […]



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