Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“I’m not distracted. I’m focused on what matters most.”

Love in Color by Bolu Babalola

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I adore fairy tale retellings and I was already familiar with the author from following her on Twitter, so of course I wanted to read this book. Add in the gorgeous cover art and I was completely sold. And this anthology is excellent, full of thoughtfully reimagined tales with strong women and varied settings, and how love unites us all. “So, what was our beginning? When we first met? When we first fell in love? But falling in love is continuous and perpetual, an activity […]

A science fiction anthology about time and the power of hope

I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories by Kim Bo-young

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This book consists of two pairs of stories by a South Korean author known for her speculative fiction. Both deal with a sort of time-is-relative theory, though in very different ways. The first and last stories are from the perspective of an engaged couple. One is traveling back from Alpha Centauri, so rather than wait the few years for her to return, the other decides to board a spaceship that’ll accelerate up to light speed – meaning that it’ll only be a few months for […]

An excellent anthology of disabled authors from a variety of perspectives.

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century by ed. Alice Wong

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This was a solid collection of essays from voices rarely heard in publishing, or elsewhere. Ableism is baked into our culture. I read this for Read Harder this year, and this is why I like participating in that challenge every year, because there are always a couple books I probably would never have read otherwise, and this is one of those. Like most essay collections, there are essays that are stronger than others. The standouts for me were the very first essay by Harriet McBryde […]

What do Australian spec fic writers do during a pandemic? Make an anthology, of course!

Crossed Spaces by Lynne Stringer, R.A. Stephens

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I’m always up for an anthology, especially a science fiction one. This is a collection of sixteen short stories by Australian authors. While there were some I didn’t care for, on the whole this was a very enjoyable collection with a few stand-out favorites. Just a note that the only place you seem to be able to buy this is from the publisher’s website. “Traitor” – Geraldine Borella – ★★★. An exploratory mission to determine the habitability of a planet leads one scientist to contemplate […]

Second chances with dead bodies, mafia hits and inherited mansions

Second Chances by Chace Verity, Dee Holloway, Leigh Landry, Candace Harper

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Just like it says on the tin, this is an anthology of four wlw second chances romances! I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that while I own books by three out of the four authors, I’ve only ever read one – the absolutely fluffy and hilarious Deal with the Demon by Chace Verity. I feel like this was a great introduction to all of them and definitely had me shuffling things around on my TBR! “So far we’ve got a dead guy and a dog in your […]

CBR13 #2: A Book of Luminous Things – Edited by Czesław Miłosz

A Book of Luminous Things by Czesław Miłosz

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I don’t think I’ve read a poetry anthology since college — and even then, I mostly just read the poems we were studying and ignored both the commentary and all the other poems. A Norton Anthology of Poetry can be a very intimidating book, after all. I didn’t actually intend to read one this time, either. However, I happened to come across a poem by Eastern European poet Czesław Miłosz which I liked, and when I googled him I discovered he’d edited this anthology. I figured […]



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