Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A Mystery I Really Didn’t Need to Have Solved

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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Oh my goodness, I really loved this.  Not even sure what genre to put it in.  Fantasy, I guess, but also alternate realities, so maybe science fiction?  Anyhow, that’s a bookshop owners’ dilemma and not mine, so I will just classify it as wonderful. Piranesi, a young man, has been the sole living inhabitant of the House as far back as he remembers.  The House is multi-leveled, multi-winged, and open to the air, the weather, and the sea.  Its vast rooms contain only massive statues […]

Oh Olive…

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

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I picked this up because it kept coming up in CBR14 reviews. After researching it a little bit, it seems that it is hugely popular. I was intrigued to find out what made it more than the average romcom-type romance. Plus I was very curious to find out whatever it has to do with ReyLo. Olive, a struggling biology grad student, kisses a random guy in her lab, her intent being to show her best friend that she has completely moved on from her ex […]

An academic slow-burn, very heartwarming, do recommend.

The Place Between by Kit Oliver

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I really enjoyed this one. If you are in the mood for a slow burn, quiet romance featuring adults with adult responsibilities and mature emotional reactions, then you might also enjoy The Place Between. I would like it if more people read it, actually, because it seems to be a bit of a hidden gem at the moment. It only has 152 reviews on Goodreads, and less than 1,000 ratings. I will also add, if you are looking for sexiness, you will find that here as […]

My hypothesis was that I would love this and now my conclusion is that I really fucking did.

The Love Hypothesis (The Love Hypothesis, #1) by Ali Hazelwood

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I was wondering where all my five star reads were in January, and it turns out they were hiding in the first week of February. PhD graduate student Olive spontaneously plants a smooch on notoriously mean and horrible Professor Adam Carlsen in order to convince her best friend that it’s okay for her to date Olive’s ex (don’t worry, he doesn’t supervise her in any way!) and fake dating ensues. That’s really all you need to know, to be honest. Objectively, this is not a […]

“There are no true stories; there are only facts, and the stories we tell ourselves about those facts.” #CBRBINGO – People

We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper

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I find most true crime stories helplessly fascinating. I know some people agonize over whether it is moral to be entertained by such stories, but I’ve never had that problem, and frankly think it’s a waste of time to think about the “morality” of what stories we consume. I think most people are drawn to true crime not because they get their jollies out by reveling in other people’s pain (though, there’s always a few . . . ) but because it speaks to our […]

this book has been kicking around for 30ish years and I just picked it up NOW?!

Possession by A.S. Byatt

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…and it’s been sitting in my own collection for a good decade or so? How did I keep stepping around this one? This book was written for me- or at least the me of ten years ago. DEFINITLEY the me of twenty years ago. 14-year-old-me would have swooned myself into an early grave with this one! A youngish academic is sinking further and further into classic British gloom. He’s in a dead relationship, putting in time in a dead-end job, researching crumbs on a long-dead […]



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