Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Black Cover and Maybe Some Black Hearts or not so Black

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

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Bingo 19: Black Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar has a cover almost entirely in the proper color. Mostly, this is a story about people who want things they think they either cannot or should not have. Luiza is part Jewish (dangerous during the Inquisition) and has some minor household magic; her milagritos are things like she can make the bread unburnt. She wants to be something more than the scullery maid; she wants better, more money, more comfort, just more. There’s also her boss Valentina who […]

“An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.”

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F Kuang

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1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to England by Professor Lovell, a mysterious Englishman who happened to appear at his mother’s deathbed . Once there, he trains for years at a grueling pace in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. (And yes, it’s a tower; subtlety, this England doth not have it.) Babel is the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. […]

Purple for the Spooky Science

The Glass Scientists vol. 1 by S. H. Cotucino

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Bingo 20: Purple When the public library has a summer reading program that adults can do, and also get prizes, it’s a good time. The past few years, the top reading level prize (defined by minutes read) is you get to take home a new book from a seemingly random selection the library ahs gotten. This year I went with The Glass Scientists volume 1. It was on the YA list, but I tend to keep an eye out for things I can use in […]

End of the Ghost Roads

Angel of the Overpass by Seanan McGuire

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Bingo 18: Border   Angel of the Overpass is perfect for “borders” because it’s a book about the borders between the living and the dead, as well as different types or realms of being dead. It’s also a ghost story, and it’s spooky season. I’d sort of been saving this one since it’s the probably final installment of Seanan McGuire’s Ghost Roads series, which I think is my favorite of her series’ though probably not the best known. The premise is firmly rooted in American […]

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London

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I never knew that Jack London wrote something called The Scarlet Plague and it was futuristic fiction. He wrote this in 1912 and at times during the story I thought about what happened with COVID-19 and what could have happened if we at that time didn’t come together and actually do what we could to contain it. I think that parts of the book though were just confusing at times (random wording occurring). I got the free version of this story so I am sure that was […]

For a guy without a head, that Headless Horseman has a good one on his shoulders.

Ghost Circus by Adrienne Kress

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Okay, so my title is a little bit of a spoiler to what happens at the end of Ghost Circus by Adrienne Kress and illustrations by Jade Zhang. The Horseman shows up at the end, you think he’s a bad guy (like he usually is in stories) but he helps our heroes. I just couldn’t resist making a good (or bad depending on how you feel about it) pun. And I think you shouldn’t miss this graphic novel either. Both classical and modern elements make […]



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