Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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In one word: Staggering Cannonball Read Bingo: Hot I will never recover from the origins of this book. That Mary Shelley started writing it to tell a spooky story on a rainy day AT THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN is staggering. And that this story has stood the test of time and become such a classic and revisited tale, so much so that I’m re-reading this book that I read when I was 13 because my kid is now reading it at 13? Astounding. So to […]

How I Met Your Monster

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 1 by Theodora Goss

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This YA novel, the first in a trilogy, introduces the reader to the members of the Athena Club. It is their origin story. What is the Athena Club? It is a group of young women in London ca. 1900 who have one thing in common — a monstrous past! They are Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde, Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein and Beatrice Rappaccini. A series of gruesome murders of prostitutes will bring these young women together with a little help from none other than Sherlock Holmes […]

It’s ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE…..!!!!!!!!!!! So, RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

Frankenslime by Joy Keller

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To understand my feelings on Frankenslime by Joy Keller you must understand a personality quirk: I can “taste” the words. Not physically of course, but I like to chew on them in my mind. And they started out dry. Very dry. Where was this obviously Frankenstein (and later you will see The Blob references) spoof going? When the dog named Igor is the best thing, you hope it picks up. When I realized that the ending was going to be an almost pee-your-pants funny, I […]

Sublime horror classic

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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This pandemic is giving me a chance to read some classics that I’ve never read before- silver lining!  Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley in 1816, when she was all of 18 years old (Lainey Gossip would call her a First Book Bitch although this was actually her second book…).  Frankenstein was Shelley’s entry into a horror story challenge between herself, her lover and soon to be husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend, Lord Byron. Despite what Hollywood might have you believe, Frankenstein is […]

Short reads to finish off my reading year (and help me to finally complete my double Cannonball)

Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen

The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedgwick

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

A Second-Chance Road Trip for Christmas by Jackie Lau

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Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen Rating: 4 stars In this novella which concludes Kelly Bowen’s The Devils of Dover series, we finally find out more about the mysterious King, who has been popping up in Bowen’s books for a long time. A shadowy London crime lord with connections to smuggling, art forgery, theft and all sorts of other untoward business, he is not a man to cross. He discovers that a man he believed to be dead, a man who ruined his childhood and set him […]

It’s official: I ain’t got no cooth

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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I’ve resolved to read more classics this year, and that puts me in a bit of a bind. There simply aren’t as many capital-C Classics by women (which does *not* reflect well on our culture), and I’m not that excited to overload on male writers just yet. I know this really means that I need to dig a little deeper and search a little harder to find the good stuff, but in the meantime, I have a few on my shelves, including one that I […]



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