Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“The space between two shores is the ocean and being caught in between feels like drowning.”

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

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A new forever favorite! If you like your fairy tales dark, and reading other cultural versions of them, read this book! If you like your graphic novels lush, detailed, and darling, read this book! If you like compelling family stories, immigrant stories, and queer characters, read this book! In the forefront of Trung Le Nguyen’s graphic novel is the story of a middle schooler named Tiên who is quietly dealing with coming out and his crush on a friend.  Alongside that is his mother’s story, […]

In the 17th century, birds were appreciated for their beauty, and also their tastiness

Pasta for Nightingales: A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore by Giovanni Pietro Olina

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The common hoopoe gets drunk on fermented grapes; goldfinches suffer from epilepsy; to properly keep francolins, you must keep a small crate or case within the aviary for the birds to nestle down in. These are just a few of the handy tips that Giovani Pietro Olina offers in his 17th-century handbook on bird care, Pasta for Nightingales. This charming little tome is an English translation of a book written in 1622, called Uccelliera, which is Italian for The Aviary. The title of the English […]

A Bard, A Fae, A Wolf and a Crow walk into a bar and start a fight

Fantastic Tales of Nothing by Alejandra Green

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The back of this book, Fantastic Tales of Nothing by Alejandra Green, says if you like Amulet, Five Worlds and Estranged you will like this. And while I agree yes this is true, there are differences to the series you might want to look at: Amulet is light, like Fantastic, but Fantastic is a tad “meatier.” Five Worlds (or at least book one, which I read) might be closest, but again, Fantastic is meatier. However, Estranged is darker by a smidgen (not that it is […]

“There are many kinds of love. But there is nothing like a sister.”

The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner

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3.5 stars Official book description: In a remote village surrounded by vast forests on the border of Moldova and Ukraine, sisters Liba and Laya have been raised on the honeyed scent of their Mami’s babka and the low rumble of their Tati’s prayers. But when a troupe of mysterious men arrives, Laya falls under their spell – despite their mother’s warning to be wary of strangers. And this is not the only danger lurking in the woods.   As dark forces close in on their […]

Started November 12th. Finished January 12th. The breaks in reading were NECESSARY

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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…but the journey was worth it. This book is brutal. If you are sensitive at all to suffering- be it human, animal, generational, cultural- turn away now and do not look back. Four Blackfeet men engage in a bit of last-minute less-than-legal Elk hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving. What happens that day never really leaves them, but what they left behind comes rocketing back into their lives 10 years later. The 10 years since that day have not been easy; the men are plagued by […]



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