Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight”

All The Way To The River (2025) by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Bingo square: RED (as in red flag as well as the cover). Content note: Cancer, death, drug addiction, abuse. I picked this book up because I read the excerpts elsewhere, and I was curious about the bigger picture–and also my thesis was on elegy, poems about dead people, and some of the questions that poets ask about how to remember the dead rather than create the dead in their own image still resonate with me. In Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search For Everything Across […]

Fantasy with less romance but more dogs

Assassin’s Apprentice: Book One of the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb

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I’m on a fantasy kick recently, this time without the romance but with plenty of court intrigue, magical powers and violence. Trigger warning for abuse and death (including animals). Assassin’s Apprentice is the first book in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, which has been reviewed favorably several times on CBR. Add this one to the favorable reviews. Hobbs includes two very compelling storylines and a cast of interesting characters whose personal motivations and abilities create some thrilling and suspenseful scenes. I tore through this 400+ page […]

Putting ideas about the past to the test

Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean

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CBR 17 BINGO: TBR, because whenever Sam Kean comes out with a new book, I add it to my TBR BINGO: Play, Purple, TBR, Diaspora, Culture In the introduction to Dinner with King Tut, Kean confesses that he always found archaeology to be a bit dry. It should be thrilling, discovering the secrets of past civilizations, but he usually finds archaeological sites to be a letdown, with “scores of sunburned men and women sprawled in the dirt, dusting off broken pot shards with toothbrushes.” But […]

“Why do you want my voice?” “Because I’m a sassy sea witch and I’m gonna keep it in a nautilus necklace, then use it to steal your man from right under your nose”

Can't Escape Love by Alyssa Cole

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3.5 stars CBR17 Pie Challenge: Inclusion CBR17 Bingo: Borrow (read through Libby, since I don’t actually own the book) Regina “Reggie” Hobbs is working hard to make her nerdy website, Girls with Glasses, a success, and prove to her over-protective parents that she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself, even if she’s in a wheelchair. She loves the work, she loves her very capable team, but lately, she’s been struggling with insomnia, and the only thing that seems to soothe her to sleep is […]

“Oona was still learning, everytime she leaped no matter the year someone important would be absent from life.”

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

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Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Alliteration Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Eyes CBR17 Bingo: O (A book title that starts with O) Official plot summary (because I read this back in July): Just because life may be out of order, doesn’t mean it’s broken. It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight, she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain […]

And now we wait

Accomplice to the Villain: A Novel by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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Accomplice to the Villain is the third installment in Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Villain Romance/Fantasy series. Since Accomplice just came out in August, I’m probably going to have to wait a while for Adversary to the Villain, which is the projected title for the fourth and final book in the series. Part of me is annoyed at having to wait and part of me looks forward to re-reading everything when the final novel is released. As with the previous books, Maehrer delivers thrilling adventure, bloody action, […]



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