Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


I admit it: I didn’t get it. But then again, I got it like a hot stick between the eyes

Birthright by George Abraham

by Leave a Comment

I have maybe 20-25 pages to go in Birthright and cannot finish George Abraham’s poetry collection. This has only happened once before, but that was because I was having a little trouble with the concepts of that other book. That poet had tossed out a lot of current events (just when they were starting to become hot/coming back into our consciousness) and there was a lot to absorb. This time it is for both similar and different reasons. This contradiction is throughout the book for […]

I’ll have a cup of tea, a dragon and a great story please and thank you

The Tea Dragon Society Vo1 by Katie O’Neill

by Leave a Comment

(image 100% stolen from internet) The Tea Dragon Society Vo1 is by the author of the Aquacorn book I recently read and reviewed. And this book is filled with contradictions for me. First, I do not think I would have gone onto the Aquacorn book had I read about the Tea Dragons first. There is a lot to love, but it is not as strong as her later book. However, at the same time it is better. Second, I rate this a four, but it […]

“He breathed in my face the coffee he’d just drunk, mingled with the odor of his gums.”

A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

by Leave a Comment

1970s Naples: a thirteen year old girl of privilege is suddenly removed from her seaside home and returned to a cramped and dirty apartment outside the city.  The key word here is “returned”; our heroine has been sent “home” to a place that she never knew. She spent her entire life living with her glamorous mother and policeman father, only to have that reality shattered in one afternoon when the man she knew as her father bundles her and all of her belongings into the […]

“Books are Doors and I wanted out”

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix B. Harrow

by Leave a Comment

#CBR12 Bingo: Debut Official book description: In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artefacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.   Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world […]

soft-core misery porn

Turbulence by David Szalay

by Leave a Comment

An older woman is on a plane. She and her seatmate are strangers. There is a bout of – wait for it – turbulence, that inserts her into her seatmate’s life. So it begins; a series of lives briefly touching lives from one story to the next. I’m sure that I was meant to feel something while reading this; something was supposed to catch my breath, quicken my heart rate- it was supposed to hit emotionally. Really, I just felt Szalay going through the motions. […]

Two reviews: a CBR12Bingo for Debut and a couple of “old timers”

Lift by Minh Le

Lone Wolf by Sarah Kurpiel 

by Leave a Comment

cbr12bingo  Debut One can find their “pack” or friends and family anyplace. Or more accurately, the “right anyplace.” And in Lift by Minh Le (who wrote Drawn Together which I greatly liked as well as a Green Lantern for the middle school crowd, which I enjoyed) and illustrated by Dan Santat you find an interesting “pack of friends.” And with Lone Wolf by Sarah Kurpiel the right place to find your family/pack can be right under your nose. And also a debut author can be under […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo