Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“He was a nobody. One of those shy kids who turned into social invalids when that first blast of adolescence hit, meekly accepted their fate, and became invisible.”

My Friend Dahmer: A Graphic Novel by Derk Backderf

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On a whim I grabbed this graphic novel back in spooky season, aka October aka why yes I am behind on reviews but committed to finishing out reviwing all the books I read in 2024 before the year is up. BUCKLE UP FOR LOADS OF REVIEWS, COMING AT YA. But I digress onto this review! Sometimes I feel like an outlier as a 40ish woman who does not have an affinity for true crime podcasts. In my 20s and 30s I had a long relationship […]

Happy Horror Days

Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Christopher Golden, Benjamin Percy, Alma Katsu, Terry Dowling, Nick Mamatas, Glen Hirshberg, Garth Nix, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Nadia Bulkin, Josh Malerman, Cassandra Khaw, Kaaron Warren

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I am a big fan of horror all year round, so I am going to be that person right now and be all “Ghost stories at Christmas are Victorian tradition!”  And they were, and I like to embrace this particular tradition.  There are 17 creepy seasonal horror stories in this book, so next year if I am on the ball I might even be able to set up a spooky reading advent-ish adventure for myself. This collection is not just about Christmas, other winter holidays […]

Husband shopping isn’t as fun as it sounds

The Husbands by Holly Gramzaio

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I love “what if” books, where you have a premise that the author just goes with, no matter how out there it is. And the question of how or why really isn’t the point. I think Jose Saramago is great at what ifs, but reading his books requires a degree of patience and concentration that Gramazio doesn’t demand. So, what if…a husband emerged from your attic? Forget the fact that you’re not even married, or that you have an apparently magic attic. What would you […]

“Possession of history is nine tenths of the future”

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran

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It’s nearly the end of 2024, and I have read well beyond my Goodreads target of 52 books, but my review count sits at zero.  Scrolling back through my year’s reading to find a review candidate this one stands out from the British and Australian crime fiction that I have inhaled by the dozen. The title and the cover are misleading.  This is not a cozy book, not a twee tale of senior citizens getting up to some mild hijinks in their twilight years.  This […]

All you need is faith?

Paladin's Faith by T. Kingfisher

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

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I am admitting that while i can absolutely read 50 plus books in a year, writing them up is apparently a challenge. I enjoy T. Kingfisher books generally – they meet a very real need for cozy fantasy with self aware flawed characters. Since the Clocktaur wars duology (hopefully i did write about that?) she has set a number of stories in that world. It is a world of city-states, gods and magic. Paladins Faith Paladin’s Faith is the fourth book in the series, which […]

“At Gatsby’s, the clock stood at just five shy of midnight the moment you arrived.”

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

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The Chosen and the Beautiful is a retelling of The Great Gatsby, which is told from Jordan Baker’s point of view. Except in this version, Jordan is Vietnamese and has been adopted into the Baker family (via a Missionary member of the family who adopted her in her travels). And oh yes, there is magic—lots and lots of magic. Full disclosure, I have read The Great Gatsby all of once, seen the Baz Luhrmann movie once, and listened to the Broadway Cast recording of the […]



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