Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You can’t solve every problem by throwing money at it

Along Came Amor by Alexis Daria

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4.5 stars CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity   Thank you to Netgalley and Avon for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Ava is nursing her hurt feelings over the dissolution of her marriage in a hotel bar, when a handsome man approaches and offers to make her a better drink than the one she currently has (she made a face when sipping it). The man clearly has bartending experience, and after a brief conversation, Ava discovers that the charming man in fact owns the […]

Prime Minister by day, detective by night

Felix Grey and the Descendent by Mario Theodorou

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Felix Grey and the Descendent is a detective novel, the first in what promises to be a series featuring Felix Grey. The story is set in London, 1904, and Felix Grey is the second youngest Prime Minister in history. Felix is a progressive and was quite popular when elected a year or so ago, but increasingly he is facing challenges from both the Conservative Party and trade unions. In the midst of this political turmoil, two prominent lords are kidnapped by a sinister man wearing […]

One day of space travel

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

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I stumbled upon Chris Hadfield’s Masterclass on space travel almost by accident. [Chris Hadfield is a Canadian test pilot and astronaut who has spent a considerable amount of time on the International Space Station.] I had a coworker who firmly believed the Earth was flat, and I firmly disagreed. But I also knew very little about space. So every time my coworker blurted out another random “fact” that he had picked up from the internet, I was baffled. Thus, Chris Hadfield’s Masterclass on space travel […]

A short, weird Japanese novella

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

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Are you into Kafkaesque novellas? Do you, like me, need a weird, short palate-cleanser between giant 600+ page fantasy novels? Do you love books that kind of don’t make sense until you think about it after finishing the last page? If so, I have the book for you! I read this book based on a recommendation from this Substack – I got it from the library and read it on my flight home from Japan (!) which was extremely appropriate, given that the setting is […]

“The economy’s in ruins, no one’s got a job, and we just don’t care, it’s bliss.”

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

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It’s 1983. Thatcher is at No. 10 and Nick Guest, age 21, has just graduated from Oxford University. He finds himself as a lodger at the house of a college friend, Toby, whose father Gerald Fedden has been elected as a promising new conservative MP. Nick, who comes from a solidly middle class background, finds himself a loose thread intricately woven into the upper class social fabric of the Freddens. Nick has the wrong background and the wrong predilections, and he knows it doesn’t take […]

Must Confess, Arty People Are Not My Tribe.

Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley

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Told alternately in the present and the past, Late in the Day follows the lives of two arty and fairly wealthy London couples, Alex and Christine, and Zachary and Lydia.  The quartet turns into a trio in no time with the sudden death of Zachary from a heart attack.  Christine is a fairly well-known artist, and her husband Alex a primary school headmaster, having given up an earlier attempt to become a writer.  Lydia has been Christine’s closest friend from their childhood days, and Zach […]



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