Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“…we’re the dream that humanity creates to make sense of the shadows on the cave wall.”

American Gods: Author’s Preferred Text by Neil Gaiman

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I watched the first season American Gods on Starz back in the day, and I really enjoyed it but never bothered with the rest of the series once I heard that the show runner and several stars were out of the project. I’ve had the novel on my shelf ever since, but its length (500+ pages) was a little off-putting. It’s a funny thing though that the “long” stories are often the ones that read the fastest while the “short” ones can be a slog. […]

…kurou, which could be translated to ‘suffering’

Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara

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BINGO!!!! Bingo tile: monster; the first big monster is the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans from (primarily) the West Coast and the subsequent theft of their property by white Americans; the second monster would spoil the mystery, but is monstrous! In Clark and Division, Naomi Hirahara crafts a mildly diverting mystery and, more compellingly, a moving portrait of the tremendous challenges facing Japanese and Japanese Americans post-Pearl Harbor. Aki Ito, her parents, and her older sister, Rose, are forcibly interned in Manzanar after Pearl […]

“Only problem is, he also has a terrible case of…the frets.”

Stuntboy, In the Meantime by Jason Reynolds

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Bingo tile: Star (I know, I know, but I am determined to Bingo this year!) both for the amazing production on this auidobook and because Zola and Portico are stars I am doing something(s) completely different (for me) with this book, so let’s see how it goes! I am reviewing a kids book that I listened to with my son (who is 9), and I will do my best to reflect my experience and what I heard from him. Stuntboy, In the Meantime, by Jason […]

Dystopian Utopia

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

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Imagine a future where war, poverty, crime, illness, disease and death have been conquered. Sounds like paradise, right? But the thing is, without death, the world becomes overpopulated and all the problems return. In Scythe, the first book in a trilogy, Neal Shusterman imagines this world where all knowledge and information is overseen by a god-like universal information storage system called the Thunderhead and where the world population is “managed” by individuals called scythes. Scythes are feared and revered and are an authority unto themselves. […]

Life: it’s not nothing

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: A Novel by Shehan Karunatilaka

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The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is the winner of this year’s Booker Prize. Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, the action takes place amidst the violence of Tamils versus Sinhalese versus Indians, not to mention a variety of outside groups and organizations connected to them. The main character is a photographer and gambler, the gay son of Burgher/Tamil mother and Sinhalese father. Maali Almeida says he is not on any side partaking in the violence in Sri Lanka, that his goal is to take the […]

A sweet, short read.

The Library by Bella Osborne

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This was a nice read. A bit misleading of a title—it’s less about the library than you’d think—but nice. As with many three-and-a-half-star books for me that are just good reads—nothing out of the ordinary or particularly noteworthy, but nothing worth criticizing either—it’s pretty hard to drum up a review. Especially since I have forgotten all the characters’ names and just had to look them all up. Through a series of charmingly contrived circumstances, sixteen-year old Tom and seventy-two year old Maggie become friends through […]



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