Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“The fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice.” (Bingo)

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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#CBR11 Bingo: Listicle (on a bunch of best of 2018 lists, including NPR, Bustle and Bookbub). Would also work for “Award Winner”, as it’s won a Locus Award, and ALA Award and an Audie, or “Remix”, as it’s a fairy tale retelling. Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of Jewish moneylenders, but her father is a dreadful one, who doesn’t have the heart to actually claim back the debts that the villagers owe, even when his daughter is starving and the long, cold winters are making his wife sicker and […]

Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad … Detective?

Fables: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham

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Bingo Square: Illustrated I admit, I’d been kind of holding off on the Illustrated category because if it hadn’t been its own square, graphic novels could have easily been my “Not in My Wheelhouse” square.  I figured I’d probably do one of the ones dealing with issues, like Persepolis or Maus, but after Behold the Dreamers, I needed a nice, entertaining read as a palate cleanser.  The two graphic novel series that have stuck in my head after countless positive CBR reviews were Fables and […]

Silver in more ways than one

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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Bingo Review 6 (Remix) I am loving this Bingo thing; it’s forcing me to pick up things I’ve been wanting to read but have hesitated to start for various reasons. Spinning Silver is one of these books. I really loved Naomi Novik’s Uprooted fairy tale retelling, and Spinning Silver does a lot of the same things. The biggest change though is also my biggest complaint. Verdict: Spinning Silver is a distant silver to Uprooted‘s gold. Spinning Silver is a mix between a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin […]

Mirrors that don’t reflect reality

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I received Boy, Snow, Bird from an earlier CBR book exchange, but it had been collecting dust for a few years. I finally had a reason to pick it back up when my Mocha Girls Read book club selected it for a fairytale’s retold theme. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel is a VERY loose version of Snow White set in the 1950s. Boy Novak runs away to a small town to escape her abusive father. She meets a man named Arturo who isn’t quite a prince, but he […]

Novik’s books aren’t just about magic; they are magic

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Uprooted was one of my favorite books of the last few years, and possibly ever. Since I’d never read Novik’s Temeraire books, I had no idea if it was a particular stroke of genius from her, or if she’s just always been consistently great and I never knew. I still haven’t read Temeraire, but now that she’s 2/2 for me with Spinning Silver, the imperative to do so becomes more pressing. Here is the summary from Goodreads: “Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, […]

A strange re-telling of Snow White

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Well, this was an odd little book.  As per the blurb:  An enticing contemporary retelling of the classic story of Snow White. While the the handsome prince, the jealous queen, the beautiful girl and of course the poison all appear, Sarah Pinborough’s charming and provocative spin on the story will captivate fans of the fairy tale all over again. I was a big fan of Once Upon a Time when it came out, with it’s unique view of fairy tale characters so I thought it […]



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