Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

J California Cooper (1)

Family by J California Cooper

by Leave a Comment

“History. Lived, not written, is such a thing not to understand always, but to marvel over.” This is the first novel of J California Cooper, who was primarily known as a playwright for much of her career, and then a short story writer for about a decade before writing this novel. This is a short novel with a slightly artificial frame, but really strong and powerful writing throughout. The novel is narrated by Clora, an enslaved woman who is the daughter of another enslaved woman […]

Give Me All the Septuagenarians Solving Murders Books, NOW!!

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

by Leave a Comment

The thing about me is that my entire personality has been pretty much shaped by the 80’s tv shows that I preferred as a child, and those shows were Murder She Wrote and Columbo.  I can be found attempting to chase those highs I felt watching them as a kid (and now in blurry reruns as an adult) by watching the terrible (yet highly watchable) Hallmark Mysteries channel.  The glaring difference though with the murder shows and movies on that channel is that the sleuths […]

The forecast is clear

Zeke the Weather Geek: There’s a Lizard in my Blizzard by Joan Axelrod-Contrada and Ann Malaspina

by Leave a Comment

CBR15Passport Different genres (science fact and fiction mixed) I am not sure if I liked Zeke the Weather Geek: There’s a Lizard in my Blizzard. I know I did not dislike it, but like? You see this is a fun story about weather, friendship and doing your best. It has some illustrations and modern touches. There are also a few “old school” parts that make it cozy and familiar, plus a bit on the fresher side. But there was nothing in Joan Axelrod-Contrada and Ann […]

Fathers and Children

The Duchess War by Courtney Milan

by 6 Comments

The Duchess War, while listed as Book 1 in a series, is actually a sequel to the novella The Governess Affair. This novel picks up almost 30 years after the events of the novella and focuses on the next generation of characters. As with The Governess Affair, author Courtney Milan does a wonderful job of putting the reader in a specific historical period and includes fascinating information about the social and economic situation of the time, in this case, 1863 industrial England. I am officially […]

Natalie Haynes (2)

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

by 1 Comment

“Sing, Muse, he sings, and the edge in his voice makes it clear that this is not a request.” I tend to shy away from modern retellings of fairy tales for reasons I’ve discussed in other reviews, but I really enjoy retellings of myths (though I like the straight retellings of them within their own context more than modern renderings of them in contemporary contexts). The difference I think is that I took a class in college reading myth as literature, and even though in […]

Deep Thoughts With Jack Gladney

White Noise by Don DeLillo

by 2 Comments

Jack Gladney is obsessed with death. As a professor of Hitler Studies, a field he pioneered, death plays a large part in his career. But he’s also obsessed with his own death. He and his fourth wife Babette frequently discuss which of them will be the first to die. Their conversations about death, and all other matters really, are circular and esoteric. They continue to be so even after an ecological disaster (very similar to recent real-life events in Ohio) makes the prospect of death […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo