Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Espionage is for the Birds

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry

by Leave a Comment

Shane Collins, the protagonist of The Peacock and the Sparrow, is a late-career spy playing out the string in a minor post in the kingdom of Bahrain. Rebellion is in the air, but the main opposition group is poorly-funded and lacking in weapons and material. Collins has a source inside the group, but isn’t sure how much he really knows and how much he is willing to divulge. Collins is also struggling to impress his much-younger boss, partly because he finds it hard to respect […]

Hopefully whoever finds this likes it more than I did

The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

by 1 Comment

CBR 16 Bingo – Bollywood. The main character’s family is from Bangladesh, and part of the story takes place in Bangladesh. I picked this book up for free expecting to read it once, and then probably put it in a local free little library. It pretty much met those standards, not exceptional but not horrible. The book is about Rukhsana, a 17 year old girl with conservative Muslim parents. She strives to be an engineer, and next year she is going to Caltech, and away […]

Rom com + murder mystery + wedding = chaos

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q Sutanto

by 1 Comment

CBR 16 Bingo – Bananas. If a rom-com mixed with a murder mystery happening at a wedding isn’t bananas, I don’t know what is! Like many of my bingo reads this year, this book has been on my TBR for a while, and I used bingo as a reason to finally read it. This isn’t the type of book I’d usually read, but it came recommended and seemed like it could be fun, so I added it to my TBR and eventually picked it up. […]

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…”

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

by 1 Comment

3.5 stars Nowhere Books Bingo: Banned books (Wasn’t published until 27 years after Bulgakov’s death, and only then in a censored version. ) CBR16 Bingo: Cult (cult classic, and there’s the whole Devil and his entourage as a central plot point – that’s pretty cultish, right?) I can’t remember exactly how long The Master and Margarita has been on my TBR list, but it’s certainly more than twenty years. A quick glance on Goodreads shows me that 15 of my friends have rated it four […]

Is this a kissing book? Yes.

Gwen & Art Are Not In Love by Lex Croucher

by Leave a Comment

She turned at the door, her face illuminated in the flickering torchlight, looking at him with utter disdain. “You can address me as Your Highness.”  “My apologies, Your f-ing Highness,” Arthur called after her, but the door had already slammed shut—he was shouting into an empty room. -Gwen & Art are Not In Love (small edit to text by me  to make this safer for work.) It’s enemies not to lovers, but enemies to friends who become wingmen for each other. It is late spring […]

A great addition to its genre (but you’re better off not knowing what it is)

The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey

by Leave a Comment

This is a book best discovered blind, without knowing the plot or even genre. But if you already know, or don’t mind mild spoilers, read ahead. “That’s Pandora…she was a really amazing woman. All the gods had blessed her and given her gifts. that’s what her name means, the girl with all the gifts. So she was clever and brave and beautiful and funny, and everything else you’d want to be. But she just had the one tiny fault, which was that she was very, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo