Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Brutally beautiful historical fantasy

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang

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I was immediately drawn to this book, but struggled with eyeball reading, so I was so glad when I got an advance listening copy as well, especially so I wouldn’t be butchering the Chinese words and intonations. This is really intense and deals with a lot of really difficult topics, and it’s hard to say any of the characters (though especially Ba) were likable, but the ending left me with a feeling of hope and healing. Told through three (four?) perspectives, A Beast Slinks Towards […]

Putin Hates It

Pioneer Summer by Elena Malisova, Katerina Silvanova, and Anne O. Fisher

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DNF I was very excited to read this book after spotting it on the NEW table in a local bookstore. With the tagline, “Putin hates it,” how could I not be interested? Released as fan fiction and then formally published in Russia in 2021, this book became a sensation on Tiktok and gained widespread popularity with Russian-speaking readers. The Russian government took notice and, along with other popular books and content about LGBTQ characters and themes, banned it. The government claimed that it violated a […]

A kid asked me to do define communism. Um…

Red Scare by Liam Francis Walsh

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Fear of communism is rampant in America, but at the moment, Peggy is more concerned with her ongoing complications from polio, her parent’s struggling marriage, and oh yeah: witnessing the murder of a mysterious man the feds are calling a Russian spy. The spy was carrying a glowing red rod, and before he died, he hid the item in one of Peggy’s crutches. Not only does Peggy find herself hiding a mysterious Russian artifact, but that artifact enables her to fly! Suddenly, her health woes […]

“Four legs good, two legs bad”

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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Nowhere Books Bingo 25: Banned Book Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Cover featuring an animal On Manor Farm, somewhere in England, an old boar gathers all the animals in the barn and makes a powerful speech about how animals suffer at the hands of humans and should rise up and take power for themselves. Shortly after his death, the animals of Manor Farm do just that – they violently fight back when Farmer Jones and his farmhands try to control them and chase the farmer, his […]

“I suppose one has to have lived in the U.S.S.R. to know what a priceless treasure security is.”

Liberation — Russian Style by Ada Halpern

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My mom suggested I read this and I’m glad she did (she knows me well and this is the sort of book that’s right up my alley). Liberation — Russian Style is short at only 106 pages, but it packs a big emotional punch and really drives home the inhumanity of the forced civilian deportations by the Soviet government during WWII. This is one of those overlooked historical events in the American understanding of the US, I think, but millions of people were forcibly deported, […]

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…”

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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3.5 stars Nowhere Books Bingo: Banned books (Wasn’t published until 27 years after Bulgakov’s death, and only then in a censored version. ) CBR16 Bingo: Cult (cult classic, and there’s the whole Devil and his entourage as a central plot point – that’s pretty cultish, right?) I can’t remember exactly how long The Master and Margarita has been on my TBR list, but it’s certainly more than twenty years. A quick glance on Goodreads shows me that 15 of my friends have rated it four […]



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