Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“She might be less than what she had once been, but she was still worth a hell of a lot.”

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

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The older I get, the more out of touch I feel with the twenty-something heroines in certain books. The romance genre especially has a lot of really young heroines, and my 45-yr-old self has a hard time, sometimes, not rolling her eyes at just how young they actually are/act, or how implausibly far away 27 feels at this point. Which is not to say that I am ready to read only the quiet, cozy mysteries that seem most populated by people older  – and still […]

Highly intelligent cats and smack-talking dolphins. What’s not to love?

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

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Many people fantasize about an estranged relative dying and leaving them a fortune or a thriving business. Few people would indulge in this fantasy if the estranged relative’s business were villainy, and if, in addition to the job, they inherited a long list of enemies. This is the situation Charlie Fitzer finds himself in when his Uncle Jake dies and he’s visited by his uncle’s second-in-command, Mathilda Morrison. Even before Morrison shows up, Charlie has problems. Once a successful journalist, he’s now an underemployed substitute […]

A charming and amusing romp that greatly entertained me, even though I couldn’t care less about birds, and actually sort of fear them

The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love by India Holton

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Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Only one bed (and horse) CBR16 Bingo: And also… (Repeat of the Bananas square, because this book fits the bill) Beth Pickering is the youngest professor of ornithology at Oxford, and she needs to really impress the faculty if she is to get tenure. She works with wealthy widow Hippolyta Quirm to try to locate and capture rare (and usually dangerous) birds. Just as they are about to capture the coveted deathwhistler, a rival ornithologist, the dashing young Professor Devon Lockley […]

Confusing, but fun

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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Nowhere Book Bingo: Award Winner (Won the Hugo and Locus awards in 1998, plus a bunch of others) Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Scene on a boat or body of water (there’s a lot of rowing on the river) CBR16 Bingo: Tech (time travel requires pretty specific technology) This is the second book in the Oxford Time Travel series, but you really don’t need to have read the first one, Doomsday Book, to understand and enjoy this one. In the universe these books are set in, […]

Fake marriage and further hijinks

The Secret Service of Tea and Treason by India Holton

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Alice Dearlove works for the secret organisation the Agency of Undercover Note Takers, or A.U.N.T., staffed by spies and agents disguised as ladies’ maids, butlers, footmen, and other household staff who mostly go unnoticed by the higher classes, but are usually in a position to see and hear everything. She’s one of their top agents, known within A.U.N.T only as Agent A. Usually, Miss Dearlove works alone and gets excellent results while doing so. Now she faces one of the biggest challenges of her career. […]

“As Charlotte plummeted to the ground, still locked in Alex’s arms, she recollected Miss Plim’s warning that kissing a man was bad for one’s health.”

The League of Gentlewomen Witches by India Holton

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4.5 stars Everyone knows there’s no such thing as witches, but if there were, they probably wouldn’t use magic in flashy and extravagant ways to fly houses around and try to rob and assassinate one another. If there were witches, they would probably use their magic in tidier ways, ensuring polite society was functioning properly. Possibly liberate those who have excessive financial resources of some of it to the betterment of those with less of it (like say, themselves). If there were witches, Charlotte Pettifer […]



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