Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I wonder if they say, “Break a leg” for good luck in India?

The First Girl on Stage: Tunga Dances the Yakshagana by Shruthi Rao

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Are you looking for a good story about breaking the gender barrier with a subject not many might know about. The First Girl on Stage: Tunga Dances the Yakshagana by Shruthi Rao and  illustrator Devika Joglekar might be what you are looking for.  The girl of the story becomes obsessed with the dances she sees on stage. The swirling, the costumes, the colors, the excitement she copies all the time. At first, her family finds it amusing, then not so much, as she continues to […]

Out of step in dance, love and friendship

Leap by Simina Popescu

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One of my flaws is that I collect links to reader copies, then forget to read them. I have had one of those links for so long I had forgotten that I not only had it, but all about the book, Leap by Simina Popescu. But once I found this graphic novel, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it. Dancers? Ballet? Another LGBTQ story? Not that I have anything against any of those subjects or themes, but dancing and ballet are not usually my […]

Starting my 2025 reading year on a high note

Into the Woods by Jenny Holiday

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This was an ARC I won from the author in a Facebook contest (!) I know, right? My opinions are my own. Gretchen Miller is a self-proclaimed badass, and she’s not lying. After growing up with financial instability, food insecurities and a lot of general uncertainness due to her father’s unpredictability, she became determined never to have to depend on anyone ever again and started earning and saving her own money as a teenager, squirrelling it away for a future project. That project became a […]

Celebrating

Queer Heroes: Meet 53 LGBTQ Heroes From Past and Present! by Arabelle Sicardi

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Over 50 famous and maybe not as famous people of the GLBTQ+ community are in the pages of the book Queer Heroes: Meet 53 LGBTQ Heroes From Past and Present!  While I did not count, I would guess at least half or more of the people mentioned are not mainstream (but known in certain circles) or might be the first time the reader (and most) have heard of/about them. Of course there were several more well known (Freddie Mercury, Ellen DeGeneres, David Bowie (who never […]

“Sylvia did reach her dream of becoming a ballerina. And it all started with one determined girl with one library book from one bookmobile.”

Ready to Fly: How Sylvia Townsend Became The Bookmobile Ballerina by Lea Lyon & A. LaFaye, Illustrations by Jessica Gibson

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We’re gonna start off today’s review by (potentially? I don’t think I’ve talked about this here before) learning a new thing about NTE: I used to be a dancer. Before my body decided that anything that required even standing was completely out of the question (so from age 3-15, basically), being a dancer was a major part of my identity. I danced five days a week – tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, & pointe. Pointe was – by far – my worst class (I had […]

Hold Up – Is That the French National Anthem I Just Heard?

The Montmartre Investigation by Claude Izner

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Rum doings in fin de siècle Paris.  And these affairs must be investigated, certainmente, but there is always time for a dalliance or two. Victor Legris, bookseller and part-time detective, is pondering over a single red shoe that has been brought to his attention by a Parisian goatherd, who discovered it in the street.  (Paris was a little more rural back in the day.)  It is possibly connected with the young lady dressed in red who was brutally murdered and dumped in Killer’s Crossing, Boulevard […]



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