Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Magnificat – an incredible ending to this series

Magnificat by Julian May

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It has been a lot of fun re-reading all 9 books in this series but it finally comes to an end with Magnificat. Julian May truly has crafted a series that is extraordinary in scope and with characters who are vibrant. And that series does come full circle in this final installation. One of my favorite TV shows is Firefly and a quote from that show that I love is “It’s not about the destination, it is about the journey.” We have know from the […]

Exploring a Family Tragedy and How Things Left Unsaid Fester

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

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I’d meant to read this for a while, but somehow ended up reading Ng’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, first.  While this one didn’t have quite the same impact as her follow up, it was still a very good novel, and I really enjoyed the complexity she brought to all the characters, their motivations, and how she portrayed how even well meaning actions could have negative and long lasting impacts. As the novel begins, the Lee family is going through their normal morning routine in […]

A book more relevant now than when it was first written

Intervention by Julian May

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I admit it, this is the books I have been looking forward to the most when I decided to re-read this series and it did not disappoint. This chapter of May’s Galactic Millieu saga starts shortly after WW2 with the first births of humans with mind powers (as far as we know, there could have been isolated incidents earlier in human history, but this is the first time a small number were born around the same period).  While there are several families in whom these […]

“Nothing was worse than someone wanting you to talk when the words you needed to say hadn’t even been invented yet.”

Far From the Tree by Benway, Robin

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cbr11bingo – Award Winner! Grace’s steady life is shattered during her high school junior year when she becomes pregnant. Her previously reliable boyfriend dumps her and removes himself from any rights to the child, and her parents are on eggshells around her.  She decides to give the baby up for adoption, which in some ways makes sense: she herself was adopted by her parents, and maybe her baby, who she nicknames Peach (the size the baby was when she realized she was pregnant), will be […]

The pecan doesn’t fall far from the tree.

The Lying Woods by Elston, Ashley

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The Lying Woods is a quiet YA mystery surrounding a family scandal. Owen has just been pulled out of his fancy boarding school upon the news that his father has left town,  taking with him millions of embezzled funds from the fracking company he runs. The company employed most of Owen’s small town, so when Owen is forced to return home and enroll in the public school, he doesn’t have any friends left there – as far as they’re concerned, Owen’s cushy life was lived […]

If you want your heart to break repeatedly

A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum

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This debut novel follows a family forced out of their home in Palestine through their lives in New York. A Woman is No Man focuses on three generations of women in the Ra’ad family: Fareeda, the matriarch; Isra, her daughter-in-law; and Deya, Isra’s eldest daughter. We meet Isra when she is seventeen years old and living in Palestine. Her parents have arranged her marriage to a Palestinian refugee living in Brooklyn. Isra has hopes of a better life with this new family. She is an avid […]



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