Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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So close but then nope

The Unofficial Harry Potter Vegan Cookbook by Imana Grashuis, Tylor Starr

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Have you ever read a book and started to appreciate it, only for one small detail to ruin the whole thing? When I picked up The Unofficial Harry Potter Vegan Cookbook, it was clearly stated that the book was in no way officially affiliated with the franchise and its author, so that didn’t bother me. The introduction is a little preachy about vegan ethics, but it’s by Evanna Lynch, the actress for Luna Lovegood. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before in vegan cookbooks. The thing […]

I didn’t think I liked romance novels

Dress Up In You by MsKingBean89

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The last book I reviewed for CBR13 was a work of Harry Potter fanfic called All the Young Dudes (ATYD). I had submitted my “best/worst of CBR13” list before finishing ATYD, which is a shame because if I had waited, All the Young Dudes would have absolutely been one of my best of the year. I loved MsKingBean89’s imaginative, romantic and tragic story of Remus Lupin and his relationship with Sirius Black, and during the holidays I went back in to AO3 to see if […]

The Biography of Remus J. Lupin

All the Young Dudes by MsKingBean89

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All the Young Dudes is a work of Harry Potter inspired fanfic that focuses on the relationship between Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, making it what is known as a “Wolfstar” story. Apparently, it is the #1 download on Archive of Our Own (AO3). I first heard about it a couple of weeks ago in this Slate piece, which raved about it. At 188 chapters (and some half a million pages) it is, they say, half as long as all 7 HP novels, and readers, […]

Harry Potter is a Herione and Wonder Woman is a Hero

The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger

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Warning: this is a review of an at least partially academic book. It gets into theory-world (literary theory) pretty hard. However, it’s also very strongly based in popular culture, mostly to help make the point that the patterns of interest to certain types of theory are influential in stories and entertainment types things beyond “Literature”-with a capital L. The style of the book is also pretty low-key; this is not an insult; it is a statement that although the book tackles some pretty academic conceptual […]

Harry Potter punches Loki in the face

On Punching Gods and Absentee Dads by Enigmaris

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  This is a review of a straight-up crossover fanfiction, so beware, all ye who enter here! As you can probably guess from the title, this is a Harry Potter/Avengers crossover.  Now, I read a lot of fanfiction, and I go through them fairly quickly.  I’m not in the habit of writing reviews on the actual works, let alone 250+ words on Cannonball (I know, bad habit).  But this one deserves it!  (Also, it’s not smutty!) After the death of Sirius, Harry receives a delayed […]

Misty water-colored memories…. (CBR12Bingo 2: Nostalgia)

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

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So, this book is set in 2011, and I was getting married that year at age 25. Not strictly my teen years. However, I’m counting it for two reasons – 1) 9/11/2001 is key to the plot, when I was an actual sophomore in high school, and 2) though the Harry Potter books exist in this universe, Simon Snow is very very very obviously a Harry Potter analogue, and the penultimate book in that series was released in 2005, when I was in my first […]



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