Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

some content warnings mar an otherwise champagne-and-froth delight of a book

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

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BINGO: Rec’d, I suppose, as this was one of my birthday gifts this year–funny to go full circle from receiving books in elementary school because I had to invite my entire class and no one knew anything about me as I wasn’t friends with them, to receiving books for my [cough cough] from friends who know I read and are anxious to find things I haven’t! h/t to Ryan 🙂 hot take this book has some unfortunate racist bits, as is unsurprisingly common in literature […]

My first encounter with the source material

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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Cbr17bingo Green I never read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a kid. Like many, my acquaintance with the story was from the 1939 film, which I always enjoyed watching even though the flying monkeys and Wicked Witch scared me. Later, in high school or college, I remember hearing that the original story was an allegory about turn-of-the-century American populism and the argument over whether or not the gold standard should be abandoned. You can read a bit about that theory here. Whether or not […]

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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This one I stopped and started a few times. I just could not get into it. This is the second Brodesser-Akner book I have read and at this point I just need to hard pass. I think this could have worked if I cared about any of the characters. But I ended up despising Ruth and Beemer. And I found Nathan and Jenny exhausting. The book just felt so long and I got tired of reading about the Fletchers. I know that Brodesser-Akner was going […]

Creating seasons where none exist (Groundhog Day part II)

On the Calculation of Volume II by Solvej Balle

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CBR 17 BINGO: Green (see cover image) Translated by Barbara Haveland Back in April, I read the first installment of Solvej Balle’s seven-part series On the Calculation of Volume and was impressed by its poetic sublimity. I wondered how she could possibly extend the concept into six more novels. I enjoyed part II, but I’m still wondering where this is going. To recap, in part I, bookseller Tara Selter is experiencing “broken time.” She appears to be caught in a loop where she keeps experiencing […]

Time keeps on slipping into the future

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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CBR Bingo: Migrant (this book features the last of the human race fleeing a dying earth and travelling in stasis to find a habitable planet). This one is actually a re-read for me. I first read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky back at the beginning of 2020 and loved it. I did intend to read the next book in the series (Children of Ruin), but for whatever reason, never ended up getting around to it. By the time I did get around to it, I’d […]

Hic sunt dracones

The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott

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CBR Bingo: Rec’d (this recommendation actually comes courtesy of Emmalita, when I asked for recommendations for more fantasy books with main characters that are older women). I’ve read a couple of Kate Elliott’s books before, but not very recently. Before picking up The Keeper’s Six, I’d sort of forgotten about her work. I remember enjoying her previous books, but nothing much actually about their contents. This is a pretty short novel, that follows Esther, a 60-ish-year-old. Early one morning, she receives a brief, fearful phone call […]



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