Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Nightmares of the Fourth Reich

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

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Without a doubt, the best thing I’ve read so far this year. Quarter of the way through and not much comes close. As I’ve said many times, I don’t like dystopias that lean too hard into the dystopic-aspect. I like them with the axis of earth just tilted slightly; looking at reality through a cracked mirror. In other words, take scary parts of society and bend them a little to suit your story. Laila Lalami more than delivers that here. What’s frightening about The Dream Hotel is […]

Picture books! Picture books! Take a look!

Night Flight by David Barclay Moore and Briana Mukodiri Uchendu

One Diwali Day: Festivals of the World by Dev Kothari and Aditi Anand

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Picture books! Picture books! Here give ‘em a look. Night Flight by David Barclay Moore and illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu (due late September/early October 2025) Why talk about a book so far out? Because it is something that will be worth the wait. It is a lovely illustrated bedtime story that is sweet, inclusive and modern. The use of a prehistoric animal we do not usually get is a nice touch as well. We have a same sex couple of dads, and the family […]

From hustle and bustle to buzz and whirr

Nightsong by Sally Soweol Han

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Nightsong by Sally Soweol Han is a story about a young boy who is tired of visiting the adults with his adult (assuming mother). But soon it is time to go home and the adult and child head for the bus, hop on and are leaving the city behind. Until the wheels on the bus don’t go round and round, and one needs to be fixed. A long day got longer, but our young boy decided to listen to the sounds around him and explore […]

“Nobody grabs SecUnits. I hadn’t realized this was a perk until now.”

Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries #3) by Martha Wells

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When I read this book in January of 2019 it was my least favorite of the original four (spoiler, it still is), mostly because I didn’t connect with the non-Murderbot characters. To a degree that is still true, I feel less connected to them than I did to Mensah’s team in the first or the programmers in the second. But, on a second visit I think that’s probably by design, as Wells is clearly juxtaposing Don Amene and Miki against those other relationships. There is […]

‘Futuretellers Ken th’ Danger of Dreams Best’

Ashling by Isobelle Carmody

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In my previous reviews for the Obernewtyn Chronicles, I made the twin observations that Obernewtyn is a very contained story and it’s The Farseekers where the series starts to find its feet. Now I can state that it’s in the third volume, Ashling, where the plot starts to learn to run. Ashling takes place about a year after the events of The Farseekers, and we open with Elspeth rescuing a gypsy woman from being burnt at the state by the Herder Faction. While the woman is […]

That’s a bingo!

The Ex-Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon

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4.5 stars Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Pets (Steve Rogers Goldstein plays a fairly major role in the book) CBR16 Bingo: Dreams (Shay has dreamed about having her own show on public radio for over a decade) Shay Goldstein grew up loving radio. She and her now deceased father would listen to radio together and even have their own pretend radio shows, so she is very grateful for her job as a producer at a Seattle public radio station, and is very happy with what she […]



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