Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Looking forward to getting to know Emma

The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion Volume 1 by Beth Brower

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Volume 1 of this multi-volume series is set in March and April of 1883. Emma M. Lion is 20 years old, nearly 21, and has recently returned to her family home, Lapis Lazuli House in the St Crispian’s neighborhood of London, a quirky place with fine homes, a Roman ghost, a handsome young pastor with rowdy friends, and some charming neighbors. The novel is set up as a series of diary entries that introduce us to Emma and the various dilemmas she will face over […]

The Persistence of Memory and of Vengeance

Assassin’s Fate: The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy Book 3 by Robin Hobb

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Welp, I’ve completed my Hobb-a-thon, the entire 16-volume Realm of the Elderlings series, and Assassin’s Fate was, of course, a beautiful and bittersweet ending to this epic story. I knew that there were going to be tragedies, heroism, and possibly deaths of beloved characters. But even when you know it’s coming, when you know who is going to die (maybe even why and how), somehow Hobb delivers it in such a way that you are completely gutted. You weren’t as ready as you thought. Hobb […]

So many magical bastards!

Fool’s Quest: The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy Book 2 by Robin Hobb

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Cbr18bingo Success because with this review I have achieved a bingo blackout and for the first time, I have done so without using the “free” space! Book 2 of The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy is 700+ pages of action and heartache. I know there are a few Cannonballers out there who love Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series as much as I do, and I am going to try my best to review Fool’s Quest without spoiling the plot. As ever, there are wild […]

Imagination is real

The Book Censor’s Library: A Novel by Bothayna Al-Essa

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This is a wonderful book about imagination, books, libraries, and censorship. It’s a love song to some literary classics and a picture of a dystopian not-too-distant future where most literature is banned and burned. How far would you go to preserve the ideas and literary creations that have formed us? What is worth saving? What price would you pay? The characters in this book have no names; rather they have titles or descriptors. The main character is the Book Censor, a man who wants only […]

Hobb-a-thon 2026 continues — the beginning of the end

Fool’s Assassin: The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy Book 1 by Robin Hobb

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Cbr18bingo You because I love love LOVE  Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series, and Fitz and the Fool are my favorite characters Fool’s Assassin is the first book in The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy, the final trilogy of Hobb’s epic 16-volume Realm of the Elderlings series. These are some of the best stories I have ever read and I know I will revisit them for the rest of my life. This trilogy picks up about a decade or so after the events of […]

All the world’s a stage

Margo’s Got Money Troubles: A Novel by Rufi Thorpe

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cbr18bingo Clown — features characters who are costumed performers (LARPing, cosplay for OnlyFans, professional wrestling). Cannonball! Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a very clever and entertaining novel about performance, voice, point of view. The narrator is Margo, who, while shifting her voice between first and third person, relates the story of her own shifting persona as a daughter, a single mother, a content creator, and a business person. Margo uses her wits and her heart to try to create the life she wants for herself […]



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