Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Before Harry Potter, There was Diana Wynne Jones

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci: Vol. I Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci: Vol I The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones

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I was reminded of Diana Wynne Jones when reading Gaiman’s The View from the Cheap Seats. I had a vague recollection of knowing her name, and decided to go check out her work. It turns out, I was a huge Jones fan as a child and just didn’t know it. I read several of her books in elementary and middle school, and aside from my father reading Lord of the Rings to me, Jones’ work was one of my first real introductions to fantasy. My library had The […]

“I knew how to do nothing. I just did everything. There’s a difference.”

Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt

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Y’ALL. I’M DOING IT. AFTER I POST THIS I AM ALL CAUGHT UP IN MY REVIEWS!!! If anyone out there is behind in reviews, let me be your motivation. YOU CAN DO IT. Let’s get me to the finish line! Voight’s Tillerman Cycle follows the Tillerman siblings (Dicey, James, Maybeth, and Sammy) as they learn to live with their grandmother, after being abandoned by their mother. Their grandmother is the quintessential recluse but has opened her home and heart to her estranged grandchildren. They are […]

“It’s still true”

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

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In the early pandemic times, when I had that “new pandemic energy,” I started reading the first books of The Babysitter’s Club series on Facebook live, adding in my own color commentary. It was a hit, I mean TENS of people tuned in (heh). Like a lot of new quirky pandemic hobbies (I’m looking at you, sourdough starter) it soon lost it’s luster and I only made it like 2 and a half books in, and I stowed the books on my book shelf in […]

“Whatever happens, believe that the journey is worth taking, and then you will reach its end.”

Seaward by Susan Cooper

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Cally and Westerly are strangers from opposite ends of the world who are about to be brought together in a place they least expect. Both reeling from grief at losing their parents, they find themselves in a mysterious, magical, and malevolent land that has echoes of their own, but otherwise is beyond imagining. They each have their own shared directive: to find the sea, where their parents implied they could be found. In this land, they meet a majestic, beautiful, and terrifying woman named Tyrannis, […]

In Which Our Intrepid Reader Takes a Trip Down Memory Lane

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“It was a dark and stormy night.”  The opening of this book imprinted itself on my ten-year-old brain in ways I didn’t fully realize until I returned to it over four decades later. I first read A Wrinkle in Time in 1975 when my grandmother, a children’s librarian, gave me a copy for my birthday.  It wasn’t just any copy; it was a signed copy that my grandmother had purchased in 1963 when she attended the Newberry-Caldecott award dinner in Chicago—almost two years before my […]



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