Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Choosing to create a full life despite being imprisoned by circumstances

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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A Gentleman in Moscow was my book club’s pick for February, otherwise I likely would never have picked it up.  Amongst our tiny group one person noped out, one person was struggling 100 pages in (unknown if they finished it), but I found myself curious and kept going.  While the writing could ramble, sometimes giving asides that have no pertinence to the story, I found myself drawn into the tiny world of Count Alexander Rostov sentenced to live the rest of his life at the Metropol […]

Who Knew You Could Learn So Much About Tennis from a Novel?

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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What would you do to defend your legacy? How hard would you work to regain a lost record? For Carrie Soto, 37-year old retired tennis star, it isn’t a hypothetical. She’s just watched Nicki Chan earn her 20th Grand Slam title, tying the record that Carrie set five years prior. Carrie’s entire career was urged on by her drive to be the greatest, and she is not going to stand by and watch another take her place at the top. So, as the title says, […]

Crime, suspense and romance in Regency England

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (The Ill-Mannered Ladies Book 1) by Alison Goodman

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Shoutout to Narfna for bringing this book to my attention! This was a very entertaining novel that contains three exciting adventures featuring a highly unusual woman in Regency England. Lady Augusta Colebrook is forty-something, single, and a member of the noble class. She and her fraternal twin sister Lady Julia are well connected and well liked in London society, but then again very few people know about their private activities. When we meet Augusta (Gus) and Julia, they are attempting to help a married friend […]

“We didn’t call the police right away.”

Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

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This book is the “One Book One Community” pick for my local library this year and is the story of a family frantically searching for their missing father, told from the perspective of his 20-year-old daughter, Mia. From the opening sentence, “We didn’t call the police right away” I was gripped with Kim’s novel and Mia’s storytelling. I found this book to be very readable and hard to put down, and specifically catered to my literary and personal interests. First of all, done well I […]

Please stop running and do something

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

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This book was recommended to me by a friend, who doesn’t usually share my taste in books, but I decided to read it anyway and was kind of disappointed. The Marrow Thieves is dystopian, so I expected it to be right up my alley, but when I read it I was surprised. It’s set at an undefined time in the future where everyone except the Native people have lost the ability to dream. Their ability to dream is stored in their bone marrow so the […]

Horrifically funny

The September House by Carissa Orlando

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Have you seen the show Ghosts? It’s a campy sitcom about a woman who sees ghosts in her house and has learned to live with them. This is kinda like that, but a lot more macabre, and a lot more funny! If it isn’t bad enough to live in a haunted house, try living in this haunted house in September! The ghosts act up more than usual, the walls bleed profusely, and forget about sleeping, with all the moaning and screaming. But Margaret is resigned […]



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