Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched”

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012) by emily m. danforth

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CBR Bingo square “Queer Lives”: The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a queer YA novel, and was banned in a middle school in 2015 in Delaware for “inappropriate language.” I mean, fuck that. The novel was also criticised by the School Library Journal for its length and pacing, and my inclination is also to say fuck that, but I do understand that this is the kind of thing where YMMV. It did take a while to get into, but I was fully immersed when I did. […]

Gini Koch encouraged me to join the team and ‘touch an alien’, so I did!

Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch

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CBR Bingo: North America – Touched by an Alien is set in the American Southwest, particularly Arizona and New Mexico. A few years ago I picked up Alexander Outland: Space Pirate by G.J. Koch and it was a blast.  Funny, fast paced, sci-fi adventure.  Afterwards, I looked for more books by the author and discovered she also wrote under Gini Koch and was impressed by the volume of books on the shelf at the bookstore.  As I didn’t know where to start, I got overwhelmed and went […]

Hypothesis: The first book will never be as good as subsequent books from an author if you read them out of order

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

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I wrote a glowing review of Ali Hazelwood’s newest book a few weeks ago. I liked it so much I picked up the first book the author wrote-  The Love Hypothesis. The Love Hypothesis has many of the aspects I liked about the author – a deep and thorough knowledge of working in STEM and strong female characters with great personalities and interests, as well as interesting male leads and supporting characters. But that’s where many of the similarities end. What I liked about Loathe […]

Watch This Space #2: Now with more space!

The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi

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My review of this first novel in the The Interdependency Trilogy can be read here: https://cannonballread.com/2023/07/the-collapsing-empire-caesars-wife/. I continued to engage with Book 2 via Wil Wheaton’s incredible narration. He did an excellent job, again. So, we pick up in Book 2 where we left off. The nefarious Nohamapetan family is attempting to recover from its botched attempted coup; the fledgling Emperox Grayland II is scrambling to convince her parliament of the impending collapse of the Flow, the method of interplanetary travel; and Lord Marce, the […]

An unsurpassed blast from the past

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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I’ll preface this review by clarifying up front that: I do not live in the USA and am not a scholar on the JFK assassination Though a rabid Stephen King fan, I have studiously avoided this book since it was published in 2011, primarily due to lack of interest. After having devoured this 800+ page book in a fortnight, I can now say that: I could comfortably answer a pub-trivia question about the JKF assassination I sincerely regret not reading this excellent book sooner. This […]

Warmth in its forms

What You Need to Be Warm by Neil Gaiman

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I am just going to say that this awesome book of poems was created by Neil Gaiman. They called it, What You Need to Be Warm. And they had a long list of illustrators, some I knew and others were new to me. And then I will say it is about refugees and other displaced people and what images, things, places or people that made them feel warm. And then just gush that this is both the best and worst thing I have read this […]



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