Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The business of empire and myth making

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

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There are a few different layers through which to view this book. At the top, there is the story between the knight and the scholar, two people intertwined across time, who are in a loop and keep reliving the same story, with variations, and have a strong connection and love, and whether they can ever break the cycle and get their happy ending. It is a story about storytelling – something Harrow seems to be more and more interested in with the Spindle Splintered novels […]

Don’t Call Me Shirley

Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk

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Marjorie Morgenstern lives with her parents on Central Park West in the 1930s. She’s a good girl despite how frequently she argues with her mother. She does well in school and is well-liked socially, being especially popular with the boys because of her good looks and sweet disposition. She is in short, a very ordinary American girl. Except the last thing Marjorie wants to be is ordinary. The easiest thing in the world for her to do would be to go to work as a […]

We’re all mad here

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

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I never would have picked this on my own – it was a book club choice. On the other hand, it definitely wasn’t boring and it was short. Hungerstone was the other horror novel set in 19th century England I read in October, and I will say as bonkers as Victorian Psycho, I also preferred it because it just kept me engaged – like a train wreck(Hungerstone was just kind of boring). As much as the narrator’s actions might make you cringe, there’s also just […]

A little light on answers for my preferences

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott

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This wasn’t quite the novel I was expecting – there isn’t anything inaccurate about the novel’s description but I was expecting a fun, fast paced fantasy/adventure novel and instead got more of dense road trip novel that was so slow paced it would almost be cozy if not for the dark subject matter. Elen is a courier in a sleepy town at the edge of the empire. Elen and her recently deceased sister Aoving settled there over a decade ago, along with Aoving’s son Kem, […]

Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair

Sun City by Tove Jansson

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Veering far afield from her native Finland, Jansson (of Moomin fame) writes of the denizens of St. Petersburg, Florida, and its retirement community.  They live in retirement hotels, within walking distance of the piers and parks, not to mention the Bounty.  Built as a full-scale replica for the 1962 movie Mutiny on the Bounty, it served as a tourist attraction connected with the St. Petersburg Museum of History from the mid-60s through the mid-80s, and its masts are easily viewed from the porches and verandas […]

Helping hands keeping stories alive

The Keeper of Stories by Caroline Kusin Pritchard

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The story within the pages of The Keeper of Stories by Caroline Kusin Pritchard and illustrator  Selina Alko is fairly simple. It is about the Jewish Theological Seminar library told in poetic language that tells from the start to the devastating fire in 1966. The publisher description says: When a fire breaks out at the Jewish Theological Seminary library, helping hands from across the community rally together to save the books and preserve the stories within the pages. Includes factual backmatter on the Jewish Theological […]



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