Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I would not have been a settler.

Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne

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I read S.C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon as part of a book club. The titular empire in this work of history is Comanche empire. Gwynne says it was the Comanches that determined when the West opened up to white settlers. For decades and decades, no one could get around them. About half-way through our club meeting, someone asked a question that’s good to ask about any book: What is this book about? Empire’s cover features Comanche leader Quanah Parker, and Parker’s name is […]

Maybe the series gets better?

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

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CBR15 BINGO: Bodies, Bodies because it’s right there in the title (and also because of the dead body) Being on a renewed Agatha Christie kick lately, I thought I’d switch things up a bit and read my first ever Dorothy Sayers, one of the other queens of the Golden Age of Detective fiction. I’d heard about the Lord Peter Wimsey series and thought it sounded right up my alley. I hate to say it, but this novel proved to be quite a slog. The mystery […]

She’s a Queen, He’s Just an Asshole

Second Chance with His Viking Wife by Sarah Rodi

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CBR15 Bingo – Europe: This book is set in Saxon England, and additionally includes Norse characters who immigrated there from Greenland. Teon hasn’t seen his wife Revna in years, when they were forced to wed to prevent a war. He hates Vikings, her father especially, and yet he can’t help but be drawn to her. I picked up this book because I’m trying to read more historical romance from different settings, and I don’t recall having read a Viking romance before, especially one it is the […]

‘No airport was an island either.’

Airport by Arthur Hailey

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CBR 15 Bingo – Nostalgia: This book is set in the glamorous heyday of air travel (and as I am currently in hour three of a ten hour layover in Munich, I can assure you I am feeling very nostalgic.) Over the course of seven hours, Lincoln Airport must go through a snowstorm, a protest, and the return of an airplane that’s had a hole blasted in its side. I love stories about airports and airplanes. They’re exciting to me because they are emblematic of adventure – […]

A truly smackable protagonist

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

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Bingo square: Relation’ship’ June Hayward is out celebrating her pseudo-friend’s latest literary success (the Netflix deal!) when the unthinkable happens. Athena Liu, rising star of literature, dies in a freak accident in front of June. And June – jealous of her friend’s success and pitying herself for her own publishing woes – steals Athena’s latest manuscript and passes it off as her own. After a little name change and some racially ambiguous author photos, Juniper Song is born. And becomes the latest sensation. But with […]

Handing trauma down the line

Denizen by James Mackenzie Watson

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Bingo: Violence; Passport: Bush noir Denizen is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read.  I bought it thinking I was getting another “bush noir” – an Australian crime subgenre focussed on rural murders. What I actually got was a lot more interesting, but also much more confronting.  I think my Kindle skipped over the warning at the front that “this book depicts mental ill health and self harm” as its dark turn took me by surprise.  The narrative has a familiar crime […]



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