Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

What do you get when you mix 1930s New York with advice from a Founding Father?

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

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Being able to submerge readers in a particular era/time/place is one of Amor Towles’s super powers. Whether it’s early 20th century Russia, or the 1950s American midwest, readers can expect to feel and breathe an era through Towles’ expertly crafted prose. In Rules of Civility, Towles’s debut novel, we find ourselves transported to New York in the late 1930s, just as the city is starting to see the light at the end of a grueling decade, a decade that “launched the Great Depression just to […]

You’re Watching Disney Channel

Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel's Tween Empire by Ashley Spencer

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Disney Channel’s children’s TV shows were a major cultural touchpoint during the 2000s, with hit TV shows like Hannah Montana and movies like High School Musical, which is all the more impressive considering that it was practically built from the ground up starting in the late 1990s. It’s hard to overstate the ubiquity of the Disney Channel’s children shows during the 2000s. I never watched these shows because my parents were exceeding suspicious of non-cartoon children’s entertainment when I was a child (I watched High School Musical for […]

Evil Woman

Old Soul by Susan Barker

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Old Soul by Susan Barker is a terrifying novel about a malevolent, otherworldly force that is transmitted to victims via a mysterious, shapeshifting woman over decades and centuries. I am not usually someone who finds supernatural themes all that convincingly scary, but Old Soul really got me. As the jacket blurb states, Jake and Mariko meet by chance and discover that they have lost a friend and family member respectively. Both Lena (Jake’s friend) and Hiroji (Mariko’s twin brother) act erratically, cruelly, and dangerously after […]

A charming book about a literal killing machine

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

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“Artificial Condition” is the second book in Martha Wells’ acclaimed series, The Murderbot Diaries. I read the first book, “All Systems Red,” a few years ago, and while I liked the premise, I had a hard time getting into it and didn’t continue with the series. I picked up “Artificial Condition” on a whim this month, and this time, I was hooked. Maybe it’s actually better than the first book, or maybe I’m just in a different headspace now. Either way, I found this book […]

“Both repetitive and unprecedented”…and absolutely beautiful

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

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“Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once, it seems he’s about to wake up and say. Both repetitive and unprecedented. We matter greatly and not at all.” “Trivial and momentous at once” feels like an appropriate descriptor for Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital.” The book details a single day in the lives of four astronauts and two cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Over the course of 24 hours, the characters orbit the Earth sixteen times, witnessing sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Most of […]

Cute enough, but not what I was looking for

Dragon Dancing by Carole Lexa Schaefer and Pierr Morgan

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I picked this up from my school library’s weeding pile, thinking it might be good for a Lunar New Year lesson. Given the title, I assumed it would be a story about the traditional dragon dance performed during Chinese New Year celebrations. Unfortunately, the book didn’t mention China or Chinese New Year at all, nor did it contain any information about traditional celebrations. The actual story is…fine. A group of kids are creating decorations for their friend Mei Lin’s birthday (am I imagining things or […]



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