Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Run, don’t walk, to read this trilogy!

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, 1) by N.K. Jemisin

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And a happy new Cannonball year unto you! It’s my first review of the new year, and as last year my full cannonball slipped through my fingertips I’m hopeful that this is the year…of redemption. But like, also, this is the year of realizing that it’s just a number and as long as I’m reading I’m a winner. Onto my first review! I had already heard of N.K. Jemisin from LeVar Burton Reads, the podcast wherein the ever delightful LeVar Burton reads short stories. He […]

The final work from Tomi Ungerer

Nonstop by Tomi Ungerer

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When I first saw Nonstop by Tomi Ungerer I figured it was going to be an odd little book. Maybe serious, but nothing too drastic. Maybe even funny in a quirky way. Also, I would not have been surprised if it had been a wordless picture book. It had gotten press, but I was thinking since the art was different and the fact it was Ungerer (not to mention his last picture book) that was the reason it was getting attention. Instead, I was slapped […]

If you want to read a book that makes you sorry you read it, but in a good way, this is for you.

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

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Riot Baby is one of those books that you really cannot talk about. And yet, of course, you must. But if you do, you tell the whole story. It is raw. It is gritty. It is gut wrenching. But if you do not, people will miss out on something…… maybe special; maybe horrible; maybe great; maybe…. I will leave it up to you to decide. As you follow Ella and Kev through South Central, Harlem, Rikers Island and back to Watts, Tochi Onyebuchi will make […]

A book to experience, but you are not always glad you did.

Man-Eaters Volume 1 by Chelsea Cain

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I was not sure what Man-Eaters Volume 1 was going to be about by the cover. But since it was in the children’s/young adult section I figured it could not be too bad. Okay, maybe a few big cats or dogs or some funny-looking “scary” monster were going to attack people but nothing I hadn’t seen before. Just a thriller story. There was a “funny-looking scary monster” all right. It is called the Female Teenager. Chelsea Cain and various illustrators created a graphic novel series […]

The most beautiful book about the end of the world you’ll ever read

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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When I read that Station Eleven would be a book club read, I decided to borrow it from my local library. I wasn’t familiar with it, but I knew that it came recommended by many in the CBR community. I had no idea this book would be so beautiful and so moving, the first book I’ve read in 2020 that I truly love. Station Eleven is the story of our world before and after its collapse as the result of a pandemic so devestating that […]

A fitting amuse bouche to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ (in it’s various incarnations)

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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The Testaments is the hotly anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, told by Atwood through the voices of three women intimately acquainted with the Gilead regime. It aims to answer the lingering question that many readers had after The Handmaid’s Tale – what brought about the oppressive regime’s collapse? Many words have been written here and all over the internet about this sequel. Was it needed? Is it just a cash-grab? My opinion on the ‘necessity’ of The Testaments is that it is an amuse […]



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