Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“Sparing another person is a tricky thing. It’s easy to think you’re succeeding when you’re failing spectacularly.”

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

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I like Holly Black’s writing. She she sets books in, basically, our real world with fantasy tweaks, and the stories are unapologetically confident in defense of myth and magic. The Darkest Part of the Forest is set in and around an ordinary town called Fairfold with a supernatural attraction: there is a faerie boy trapped and hibernating in an unbreakable glass coffin in the forest, symbolic of the town’s close proximity to the Fae people. Generations of residents have built lore around the boy and featured him as a player in personal fantasies and dreams, while tourists come to Fairfold […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/25/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:4 |

I believe the woman behind the case study, but she’s not unimpeachable

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey

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What an interesting book this is, and what a challenge to review, given how I came away from it. Anna Lyndsey’s story is that after decades of normal living, she slowly becomes so sensitive to light — both natural and artificial — that she ends up confined to a completely blacked-out room in the home she shares with her husband. Girl in the Dark focuses mostly on her declining health and the time that she spent at her lowest, while she lived in complete darkness for years. Since publication, Lyndsey’s symptoms have apparently abated somewhat, and she doesn’t require complete […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/12/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:2 |

The academic research paper of fiction

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

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For a book that seemed to be received so positively initially, around the time of release, it seems like all I’ve read lately are reviews that are disappointed by how boring it is and confused by why it was so well-liked. You might say my expectations were pretty low. So I had to laugh as I realized I was enjoying it. A Discovery of Witches is EXCESSIVELY academic. Not just in the subject matter, which obviously is, but in the whole tone and writing approach. I recognize every paper I’ve ever written, read, or reviewed in it. The story proceeds […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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1/14/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

Rolling in with a late Cannonball on a hate read

Red Queen Series (#1-3) by Victoria Aveyard

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So, about three weeks before starting Red Queen, I finished a book called Morning Star, the final book of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy. That series was about a class of humans called Reds who had been born into slavery, in a society that coded humans by color and where each color was assigned a particular role in Society, with Golds on top. The protagonist, Darrow, infiltrated the Golds with the aim of initiating a revolution that would hopefully lead to a more equal society. It was a very good series. I didn’t write a review because I’ve been pretty […]

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12/21/2018 's CBR10 Review No:52 |

Bee biology re-imagined through the language of human dystopia

The Bees by Laline Paull

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The Bees is a very weird and cool book that’s a third-person narrative of a literal bee, navigating the dystopian politics of her hive. There are a lot of tropes in here that are not exactly unique to this book among the glut of other dystopian fiction, but the framing of the insect colony is novel. While, naturally, some liberties are taken with facts, the structure and major events of the novel are based on known entomology of bees and how hives operate. All that Paull really needed to do to turn reality into fiction was to choose a point […]

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12/3/2018 's CBR10 Review No:48 |

This is the version of this story that I was looking for

Dating You/ Hating You by Christina Lauren

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A few years ago, there was a book called The Hating Game that featured two people in competition for the same job and even as they pretended to hate each other, sparks were flying and it turned out they actually liked each other very much. Everyone loved that book. I kind of thought it was just okay although I tried very hard to like it. This book has a VERY similar premise and I like it much more. Rather than the romantic comedy contrivance of introducing the characters as “hating” each other (even though it’s quite obvious to the reader […]

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11/24/2018 's CBR10 Review No:47 |

I came to this book both too early and too late

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

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Well, this book ages really, really poorly. Some spoilers below. It reads exactly like the time it was written (1989): “progressive” enough to include, at least superficially, a cast of characters including a same-sex couple and people of color in mixed-race relationships, as well as treatment of the AIDS epidemic and drug abuse that leans more sympathetic than condemning. However, it’s not exactly “woke” enough to avoid stumbling into some major Don’t Do That’s. Weetzie, pixie bohemian darling protagonist, is signified as being creative and unique in part thanks to her habit of incorporating Native American flourishes into her fashion. […]

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11/24/2018 's CBR10 Review No:46 |

A magical sports world where every athlete is uncommonly attractive and devoted to true love

Game On Series (#1-4) by Kristen Callihan

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Kristen Callihan is a hot name in NA, for her Game On series, which are football romances between the athlete heroes — all of whom are as astonishingly dedicated to academic/intellectual pursuits as to football — and heroines who are very outspoken about how little they are impressed with the formers’ football fame. The books tend toward insta-lust that becomes love *quite* quickly. I’m not bothered by insta-lust/love unilaterally, but if you read too many of that type of story in a row, the heat loses some of its effect. Taken on their own however, Callihan clearly knows how to […]

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11/24/2018 's CBR10 Review No:45 |


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