Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Brutally beautiful historical fantasy

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang

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I was immediately drawn to this book, but struggled with eyeball reading, so I was so glad when I got an advance listening copy as well, especially so I wouldn’t be butchering the Chinese words and intonations. This is really intense and deals with a lot of really difficult topics, and it’s hard to say any of the characters (though especially Ba) were likable, but the ending left me with a feeling of hope and healing. Told through three (four?) perspectives, A Beast Slinks Towards […]

The tail wagging the dog

Hoax by Brian Stelter

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Certain of my family members are very into politics (and skepticism), so there is a steady diet of political non-fiction streaming into our house. I usually ignore these in favor of novels or more business-y or memoir-y non-fiction, but I was drawn in by the ‘behind the scenes in the Trump whitehouse’ promise of Stelter’s book. Stelter is a journalist, formerly with the NYT and now with CNN, and has spent over 2 decades covering DC politics. Hoax traces the tightly interwoven rise of right […]

Nature of happiness

The Fox on the Swing by Evelina Daciute

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The Fox on the Swing was created by Evelina Daciute and Ausra Kiudulaite. This creation of theirs has made the award scene say it has something about it that earned it the 2019 Batchelder Award. This winner, originally published in Lithuanian as “Laime Yra Lape,” is obviously not a book that was written in English first.  You can feel the non-Western flow to the writing style. There is an obvious feeling of a translation, but everything does work as the translation was not choppy as […]

Proudly Perfectly Peculiar

The Peculiar Possum by Tracey Hecht

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The Peculiar Possum is one of a series. I do not know which number but know that there are several in the older easy reader level (I would say ages high first up to medium second grade), as well as a few novels for (according to Amazon aged 7 to 12. But not having read them, I am unsure if this is correct. I find their ages tend to be a bit on the young side, to be honest). The premise of this one is […]



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