Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I want to see this Bond movie

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy: An original Jane Bond Parody by Mabel Maney

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Cbr15bingo sex This book was published in 2001 and somehow I only just heard about it a few weeks ago. It is a hoot, with the kind of silly-named characters and wacky mix-ups that you might find in a Jeeves and Wooster novel. American writer Mabel Maney gives us the story of Jane Bond, the lesbian sister of James, who drinks and sleeps around like her brother but who lives in a run-down bedsit and works at a bookstore in 1965 London. Jane is dealing […]

“Unfollow” taken to the extreme!

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

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Cbr15bingo Take the Skies/Take Flight — entire story is set on a train trip This might turn out to be the weirdest book I read all year. I’m not sure I even understand exactly what happened, and the meaning(s) of this tale are probably deeper and more complex than my poor brain can fathom, but I did find it very interesting and hard to put down. I’ve read a couple of Helen Oyeyemi’s other books and thought they were excellent. She has a talent for […]

Clue Meets the British Baking Show

The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell

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I’ll be side-eyeing Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood from now on. Not Prue though, I have complete faith that she’s probably already gotten away with murder several times. For the past ten summers six bakers have traveled to a remote estate in Vermont to participate in ‘Bake Week’, one of America’s most popular cooking shows. Grafton is also the childhood home of host and esteemed celebrity baker Betsy Martin. This year something just isn’t right. An unexpected co-host is added. As the competition begins acts […]

“It isn’t just taking a life that destroys a people. It’s taking their history.”

Thistlefoot: A Novel by GennaRose Nethercott

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Cbr15bingo In the wild (shifters) features characters that are shape shifters Thistlefoot is a story of generational trauma that is part fairy tale and part history. The fairy tale part borrows from the Russian tales of the witch Baba Yaga. The history is that of the Jewish people, specifically the pogroms that occurred in Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century. This is a novel about the violence that destroyed Jewish communities, the fear that feeds that violence, and the vital importance […]

Where the Animals Have Better Manners

Riders by Jilly Cooper

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CBR15 Bingo – Sex: What would a bonkbuster be without sex? And here it drives much of the action and drama of the book as well. Jake Lovell and Rupert Campbell-Black were born to very different circumstances which have made them very different men, but they both have the same goal – to rise to the top of the spectacular, high-octane world of… show jumping. As I was embarking on an international trip with limited internet access, I thought it would be prudent to stock up […]

How do we become human except in the face of adversity?

Happiness by Aminatta Forna

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HALF CANNONBALL! CBR15 BINGO (Africa square: The main character is African. Author is of African descent: father from Sierra Leone. Various political/military situations in the book take place in Africa.) Yet another book that jumped out to me initially because of its eco-fiction bent: studying urban dwelling fox in London. However, it turned out to be about so much more than that. Attila is an itinerant psychologist from Ghana that specializes in PTSD. Regularly traveling to give keynote speeches and expert testimony, his early career […]



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