Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The not-so-lady with the creepy a$$ doll who did more than just Marlene Dietrich

Joe the Pirate by Hubert and Virginie Augustin

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Joe the Pirate by Hubert and Virginie Augustin is about a totally and completely scandalous individual. Born Marion Barbara Carstairs (later known as Tuffy), she would become Joe Carstairs. She didn’t want to be a man, just had fun pretending to be one. This started when she was young and having a swinging time in the early 1900’s. The flapping 1920s would see her have affairs with such people as Dolly Wilde, Tallulah Bankhead (who liked to take her dress off and jiggle it in […]

January 2026: Intro & Reading Recap

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As with most things I do, I dived into CR18 headfirst without introductions or explanations. I can always do those later, right?  Better to just get started, right? Right. But here we are, at the start of a new month, which seems like a good time to pause and say hello. “Han Solo Salutes the Conductor” by Sam Howzit is licensed under CC BY 2.0 . Over the past few years I have lost a number of friends to cancer. Cancer feels super extra unfair […]

Contemporary history

Journey to Tomioka by Laurent Galandon

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Journey to Tomioka by Laurent Galandon, translated by Owen Smith and Anne Smith with illustrations by Michaël Crouzat was read via an online reader copy. In June 2026, however, you can find a copy, which I highly recommend. The publisher, First Second, has become one of those publishers for me that I might not always love something they published, in fact, I might not even like it, but I always respect what happened and the time it takes to make something that can be thoughtful, […]

For the right reader this will sizzle!

What We Buried by Caitlyn Siehl

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What We Buried by Caitlyn Siehl is descriptive poetry that has both elements of modern and traditional formats. Things are (word wise) straight forward, but sometimes meaning can be a bit less so.  It is a book where you need to be be comfortable, relaxed and need to be able to just sit back and enjoy thoughtful words I was not able to finish the book before writing this review, not because it was bad, in fact, pretty much the opposite. Except occasionally it felt […]

To the Pole, Me Hearties! But We Gotta Be Back Before the End of Winter Break

Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome

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So what’s in order is another feel-good installment in this series in which parents leave their adolescent offspring more or less unattended for a period of time allowing them to spend their school holidays faffing around on boats.  But, plot twist, this time it is winter!  The original six, the Swallows and Amazons, are once again joined by the D and D from the previous volume (alas, they do not have a team name yet, since they do not have a boat). So all the […]

The Guns of Avalon

The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny

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The Guns of Avalon picks up directly after the first Amber story. Our hero, Corwin, walks through shadow yet again, gathering an army so that he may mount a second assault on Amber in service of defeated Eric and taking the throne for himself. But all is not well in Amber, and by extension, in shadow. Amberites are able to utter a curse with their dying breath, or with an equivalently dire moment. When he was punished and imprisoned for his failed coup in Nine Princes […]



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