Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

More than the crow flies

Cranky, Crabby Crow (Saves the World) by Corey R. Tabor

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At first I didn’t think I would like Cranky, Crabby Crow (Saves the World),  but the twist at the end is perfect for kids of all ages. The idea of Corey R. Tabor is simple: a Crow chases off anyone who wants to befriend him, get him to play or give advice. But things are not what they seem. There is a ring-ring nearby, a secret conversation and message (a sassy Kaw!) and one heck of a surprise for the reader. This simple thing turns […]

April is Poetry Month

She'll Be the Sky: Poems by Women and Girls by Ella Risbridger

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I started reading the introduction (which is something I don’t always do) to She’ll Be the Sky: Poems by Women and Girls by Ella Risbridger and illustrated by Anna Shepeta. But I stopped maybe half way through as I started to feel that the author was telling me what I was supposed to think about the poems and the choices they made with the inclusion of the poets and poems. Plus it felt as if I needed to agree with their opinion on having a […]

Not Bad, but Not for Me

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

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This was not a bad book, but it has confirmed that I am not the right audience for Sally Rooney. I didn’t really care for Normal People but thought I’d give this a chance because some people who didn’t like Normal People did like this one. And I did indeed prefer Intermezzo, but not as much as I’d hoped. A large part of the problem is that I disliked Peter, one of the POV characters. His self-pity, while realistic in its duration, grew old, and I didn’t care for […]

Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights….

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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Layne Fargo with The Favorites is trying to do what Barbara Kingsolver did with Demon Copperhead: take a literary classic and update it for a 21st-century audience. Some readers dislike Demon Copperhead for what they see as its forays into trauma porn and its sadistic treatment of the main character. For the record, I love DC. But no matter what you think of Kingsolver’s novel, it’s a work of genius compared to The Favorites. Admittedly, the scope is a bit different. While Demon Copperhead uses Dickens’ David Copperfield as a framework to explore the […]

Perfectly pleasant but could have been more

A Love Like the Sun by Riss M Neilson

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Why is that some books make you unfairly overthink when other very similar ones don’t? Does that mean something else is going on in the reader’s life to make it stand out more? Is it one of those where it’s been building for a while from reading certain novels and this is the one that broke the camel’s back or is it that this author maybe highlighted it too much and made it hard to ignore? Or maybe it was a combination of the three. […]

What makes a good leader? A just society?

The Will of the Many by James Islington

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Going in, I was expecting to like this but I don’t think I realized how much and how well it would hit themes that I generally tend to enjoy in fiction. Layers upon layers of intrigue and deceptions? A competitive academic setting? A detailed and intricately thought out magic/power system that is very logic based but doesn’t expect me to do the math behind it to get the gist? In some ways, the easiest comparison might be Red Rising but that’s also lazy and only […]



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