Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Not what I expected, but absolutely amazing

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

by 3 Comments

So at the end of last year, I decided that 2026 would be the year that I fully indulged my love for dark academia. I did some googling and put together a list of books that were considered part of the genre. Somewhere I came across The Raven Scholar and put it at the top of my list, as everyone seemed to love it. While reading it, I realized two things: 1) while there are a few dark academia elements, it’s not a book that I […]

This is a story about friendship but guard your heart

The List of Suspicious Things: A Novel by Jennie Godfrey

by Leave a Comment

This debut novel by Jennie Godfrey was inspired by her childhood in Yorkshire in the 1970s when a murderer stalking women came to be known as the Yorkshire Ripper. Godfrey’s father had actually been an acquaintance of the man later arrested for the murders. In The List of Suspicious Things, main character Miv is a 12-year-old Yorkshire girl who decides that she is going to conduct her own investigation into the identity of the Ripper. Through Miv, her family, friends and neighbors, Godfrey reveals to […]

“And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn’t have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.”

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

by Leave a Comment

An author tries to tell the story of a poor young woman called Macabeá, who despite her wretched circumstances does not seem to understand how unhappy she should be. I picked this book because I read a review by someone else on Goodreads that said this is a bit like if Sybil Trelawney from Harry Potter wrote a book, though I will argue after reading that Lispector, unlike Trelawney, knows exactly what she’s about. (The other thing I know about Lispector is that she wrote […]

Not That Kind of Oven

Skye O'Malley by Bertrice Small

by 7 Comments

Beautiful Skye O’Malley falls in love with Niall Burke on the eve of her marriage to another man, but even someone as adventurous as she cannot imagine the twists and turns her life will take on her way back to him. Sometimes you just want to lay back, turn off your brain, and enjoy a rollicking adventure full of romance, drama, and a surprising amount of politics. Bertrice Small’s work fits the bill perfectly, and in the life of Skye O’Malley, her best known heroine, […]

Nabokov is Funnier than I Gave Him Credit For

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

by Leave a Comment

“I’m not smart enough for Nabokov” I thought to myself as I began his hilarious and sharply observed novel Pale Fire. But then I remembered a saying I recently heard: I don’t have to understand something to appreciate it. And I understood more than I expected to. Like Lolita, Nabokov has written an unreliable narrator, full of himself and driven by unrelenting desire, in this case, the desire to have ownership of his poet neighbor’s final poem. The narrator, Dr. Kinbote, opens the work with […]

“When you love someone who deserves it, you have to be willing to adapt a little.”

Nobody's Baby (Dorothy Gentleman #2) by Olivia Waite, Blair Baker (narrator)

by 1 Comment

The second book in the Dorothy Gentleman series by Olivia Waite was one of my most anticipated books of 2026. I’m pleased to report that Nobody’s Baby lived up to my hopes. The book continues in the world that Murder by Memory began last year. The world Dorothy lives in is that of 10,000 people living on a generation ship sailing through space on their way to a new home. The Fairweather has been sailing through space for three centuries already and its passengers live ,and age, and when it’s time to die they are provided a new body aged 20, and their consciousness and genotype are loaded in from the saved files in the Library when they are ready. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo