Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“We had no shield. I had to become one.”

Queen of Exiles by Vanessa Riley

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After the death of her husband and the coup ousting her family from power in the new nation of Hayti, Queen Marie-Louise Christophe and her daughters flee to Europe, where they must learn how to navigate a racist society as Black royalty. I’ve been excited to read this book, because it follows a woman and an area of history I’m not familiar with, and because as a Black monarch, I knew Louise would provide a radically new perspective on the Regency period, which I’ve read […]

Pike, This Ain’t Wuthering Heights

The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub

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Mary Bennet is famously the odd one out among her bright, vivacious sisters – an awkward show-off and a bore. But in this book, it’s what Mary’s doing off the page that deserves attention. This book is part-sequel, part-companion to the fabulous The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, which I read and greatly enjoyed last year. You haven’t got to read that book to enjoy this one – Mary and Lydia are after all not exactly close – but there’s definitely some things which […]

Golden Girls with Feet of Clay

The It Girls by Caroline Young

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Nowadays, when one thinks of someone who’s “famous for being famous,” one thinks of the Kardashians or Instagram influencers. But the phenomenon of the It girl is a long and storied one. I read this at about the same time as I read Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century, and they work pretty well as companions – that book describing trendsetting fashion, and this book describing the trendsetters themselves. Young tells the story of It girls through the centuries, who hold such diverse […]

Things That Go Bump at the Dinner Table

Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror by Ellen Datlow (editor)

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In this anthology of psychological horror, we encounter killers, madmen, and twisted families in this presentation of the many shades of human depravity. My preferred subgenre of horror is psychological horror. Here there’s no ghosts or curses or demons – just the strange and terrifying excesses of human nature. The horror is enhanced by the fact that, bar the occasional tinge of the supernatural, everything that happened in this book could happen in real life. All of the stories included in this book were originally […]

Skirts Just Look So Good on Us!

Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell

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Fashion can say a lot about the people that wear it and the places they occupy in time and space. As such, women starting to wear pants is a shorthand for progress in feminism – but, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell argues, the evolution of skirts over the twentieth century too has plenty to say. Like the author, I wear a lot of dresses and skirts, mostly because they are an easy way to look like you’ve made an effort, and also let you slouch and lounge around […]

The Pharaoh (Female), the Pharaoh (Male), and the Priestess

Neferura by Malayna Evans

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As the daughter of two pharaohs and the sister of another, princess and high priestess Neferura is one of the foremost people in the kingdom. But as her co-regent mother and brother fight for power, she’s just another piece on their board – unless she can manage to break free. In first grade we had a unit about ancient Egypt, where we learned all about how they worshipped cats and pulled brains down through mummies’ noses and invented paper. And of course we learned about […]



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