Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Saints! Soldiers! Sorcery! Swords! Swooning!

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

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It’s time for me to FINNALY go all-in on some good old fashioned FAN TA SY. Normally, these are the sort of books that I pick up in the bookstore, give a “hmm” at the cover, and keep walking. I’ve never been great at immersing myself in fantasy worlds outside of the big-names; I just don’t have a memory for the complex lore and histories of most fantasy epics. When I open up a book and it starts with breakdowns of family names and maps […]

A Worthy Prequel to Bone

Rose by Jeff Smith and Charles Vess

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Wrapping up my Bone series re-read with the prequel graphic novel, Rose. This is written by Jeff Smith but illustrated by Charles Vess, so you’re not getting Jeff Smith’s cartoony style here, despite the misleading cover. Instead, you get Vess’s beautiful full-painted art, which is unfortunately a little squashed and hard to make out the fine details in the edition I got. I think it would have been better served by a full trade binding, but I ended up with a library edition with a “Kidproof Cover,” […]

A Masterpiece of Graphic Storytelling

Bone by Jeff Smith

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What can even be said about Bone that scholars and fans already haven’t said? It helped pave the way for the current middle-grade/YA graphic novel boom, it’s a beautiful masterpiece of long-form storytelling, it was completely self-published, it’s won every award….Bone is a testament to artistic effort and cartooning on the highest level. Personally I love it and have a long history with it. We had this same one-volume edition when I was younger and I reread it several times when I was in the most intense stage […]

a mermaid’s tail made of donkey skin (a dual cbr13bingo and #cannonbookclub adventure!)

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

Sea Witch by Sarah Henning

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well, not exactly. What we have here are two retellings of classic fairy tales: Charles Perrault’s deeply upsetting Donkeyskin (recently reviewed by our very own BlackRaven) and Hans Christian Andersen’s  also unsettling The Little Mermaid. Both of these entries are picks for our upcoming #cannonbookclub event- and I’ll be discussing Deerskin further during our Zoom- but in the meantime, let these two help you choose your pick(s)! Also- both of these tales of girls on the cusp of womanhood have been reclaimed and retold by women. […]

Getting Back in the High Fantasy Game

The Way of Kings: Book One of the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson

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I will preface this review by saying this kind of writing used to be my jam. I inhaled massive high fantasy series in high school and college, exclusively reading Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, Mark Lawrence, Patrick Rothfuss,  and GRR Martin. But then I joined CBR and started reading more widely. I fell out of love with the war-heavy, white male centric doorstops and found a new home in magical realism and the glory of a one-book wonder. Aside from rereading Tolkien, I’ve had a hard […]

One Ring To Rule Them All…..

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

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My first encounter with the enormous doorstop that is Tolkien’s classic was when I was ten and my dad read it to me as a bedtime story. I blame him, and these books for my obsession with fantasy and the ridiculous amount of Pinterest boards I’ve dedicated to LOTR and Hobbit fan art.  Even so, sitting down to re-read the doorstop is a commitment I’m not usually ready to make, so for a long time, the movies have kept my obsessions alive. But pandemic lock […]



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