Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Belonging

Until We Meet Again by Lily Kim Qian

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Until We Meet Again by Lily Kim Qian is thoughtful and reflective. Qian gives us a coming of age story of a young herself, who is a Chinese-Canadian girl who deals with her family dynamics such as her mothers mental illness, her mother and fathers volatile relationship, and dealing with growing up with a caring father, but one who is just doing the best he can, and the attitudes of immigrant parents and “old school” Chinese values vs her western world. The cultural differences of […]

Apocalypse (S)now – The End of the World at the end of the world

Moon on the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

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There’s a moment in the ’90s movie Independence Day where the Americans lead the charge against the alien invaders by rallying the various nations of the world together. In its rally-raising way, you can almost see the cultural change that came in the following decades. The move away from the centering of Western perspectives to a blend of voices which better represent the world as it is that’s still happening. This book feels like it’s sitting in that ’90s apocalypse window, where the enemy was […]

Sometimes, a book cover promises cats and lies. This book, on the other hand, delivers in spades. SO many cats, guys.

Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

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4.5 stars Nowhere Book Bingo 26: A book involving animals Monthly Keyword Challenge 26: Cat Official plot summary, because I finished this back in February, and my perimenopausal brain isn’t exactly helping here: Agnes Aubert leads a meticulously organized life, and she likes it that way. As the proudly type-A manager of a cat rescue charity, she has devoted her life to finding forever homes for stray cats. Now it’s the shelter that needs a new home. And the only landlord who will rent a […]

Come for the cats, stay for … also the cats

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

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Like many other Cannonballers, I was familiar with Heather Fawcett because of the Emily Wilde novels, so when I saw her next novel was going to involve a magical cat shelter, I was in, even though I hadn’t enjoyed the third Emily Wilde novel as much. Overall, I had a really fun time with this but it really was primarily due to the cats and the cat shelter, and I actually would have enjoyed even more cats, and day to day life at the shelter. […]

“Isn’t it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up? Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain.”

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

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Valency has always lived a dull and restrained life under the thumb of her family, but decides to start living how she likes when she learns she has only a year to live. I knew the plot twist of this book before I got into it, though I’m not sure how – maybe the plagiarism controversy of Colleen McCullough‘s The Ladies of Missalonghi? Anyway, luckily it didn’t really affect my enjoyment. This book has all the hallmarks of an LM Montgomery book – the rich […]

Bear

Bear by Marian Engel

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Fishwives. Fishwidows. And we all set out to be mermaids. ― Marian Engel, Bear The world was furred with late spring snow. It was the soft, thick stuff that excites you unless you are driving or half dead, packing snow already falling in caterpillars off the greening branches. ― Marian Engel, Bear This is the story of a woman who sequesters herself in a remote area of Ontario, Canada, to catalog an estate bequeathed to the Canadian government. In her isolation, she finds herself, breaking […]



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