Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You Can Check Out Anytime You Like, But You Can Never Leave

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

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Let me state a couple of my biases upfront because they cut against this book and I think you should know how much salt to take my opinion with. First, I listened to this one as an audiobook. As a relatively new listener to audiobooks, I’m still calibrating the precise impact the format has on my enjoyment of a novel, but in general it seems harder for me to invest in fiction when I listen to it as opposed to reading it. Second, I had […]

I think I’m finally ready to quit you

Stolen in Death by J. D. Robb

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Stolen in Death is J. D. Robb’s 62nd installment in her long running In Death series. To give you perspective about how long she’s been writing these, the first installment, Naked in Death was published in 1995. Bill Clinton was still in his first term as President, women everywhere were listening to Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill on repeat, and Clueless made yellow plaid iconic. At this point, J. D. Robb has a definite formula for these books. Something terrible happens to someone, Lt. Eve […]

The ’90s Called…

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

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  Everything I Never Told You floored me emotionally, reminding me that fiction that resonates with you can grow your empathy while providing support. Little Fires Everywhere is a good book but has made less of an impression on me. Like her first book, this story starts with an in media Res, but it feels less intriguing than previously. It didn’t really feel like it was necessary, the story being enough to draw me in. There are a few themes across this book, with motherhood being the main one, […]

Wherever I had ended up, this world wasn’t limited by the pages of the books I knew.

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

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This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is a chonk. And just like when people called my former dog a chonk, a land seal, a door stop, I think every word is precious. The audiobook is 21 hours and 34 minutes, and I’ve listened to it twice in a week. Kristen Sieh is a fantastic narrator. I’m probably going to listen a few more times before the book comes out March 31. We meet Maggie on her third day in Kair Toren, the capital city of […]

Always this empty heart, always

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

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Dave Win is a thirteen year old school boy at the start of this novel. It’s 1960s England, and Dave – the bastard son of an Englishwoman and a Burmese man, long lost to the turmoils of his home country – grows up as the perpetual outsider. Dave is clever; he has won a scholarship to an elite boarding school, handed out by Mark and Cara Hadlow. The Hadlows are noblesse oblige: patrons of the arts, champions of the disadvantaged. When we first meet Dave […]

So close

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

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Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase takes place in some far future Botswana. The world is practically a crime free utopia for men – thanks to a lack of privacy and misogyny. And with body hopping technology, people can practically live forever. The setup is like Minority Report meets Altered Carbon. I think. I’ve only seen part of one of those. Nelah is a successful and kinda famous architect with a seemingly supportive husband, a seemingly supportive secret lover, and a criminally prone body. (I appreciated the […]



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