Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

If you want to live forever, read this book. It will feel like an eternity.

A Fate Inked in Blood: Saga of the Unfated Book One by Danielle L. Jensen

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Set in a world where the Gods frequently join in marital relations and give blood to their chosen children, Freya chafes at her life. Bound in an unwanted marriage to a son of the Ocean God Njord, she spends her days gutting fish, but dreams of joining Snorri’s, the region’s jarl, war band and proving herself in battle. And putting an axe in her boorish husband’s back. (Of course he’s horrible; this is a Romantasy, and he’s not the MMC.) Her dreams abruptly come true […]

“In the name of the Garden State Parkway, I am not a princess!

The Serpent's Secret by Sayantani DasGupta

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The Serpent’s Secret By Sayantani DasGupta   Kiranmala is a normal, 12-year-old Indian girl living in Parsippany, NJ.  She goes to school, she has friends, and her parents own a convenience store.  She bemoans the fact that her parents insist that she dress up as a “real Indian princess” every year for Halloween (which also happens to be her birthday!)  This year, things are a bit different though.     When Kiran gets home from school, something is off.  She’s trying to figure out what exactly […]

History is written by the victors

The Histories by Herodotus

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Here is the long and storied background to how this brick of a book has been in my possession, unread, for 20 years: I picked up The Histories from the sale rack at A&B sound when I was a romantic undergrad student, smitten by Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, in which The Histories plays a supporting role (it is the book that Ralph Fiennes’ character carries with him everywhere and turns into a journal, pasting in paintings that Kirstin Scott Thompson’s character made of the […]

“In the clear and steady gleam of electric lights, superstition turns to foolishness; in the crucible of the combustion engine, false beliefs are burned away.” (Bingos #9 & 10)

Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite by Zoraida Cordova & Natalie Parker (editors)

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My Halloween read this year is this collection of new vampire tales edited by the team of Zoraida Cordova and Natalie Parker. I enjoy vampire stores because they offer so many different views onto the human condition, if you go looking for them. In Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite Cordova and Parker, along with the assembled authors, take the time to dig in and explore these angles – with postscripts by Cordova and Parker after each story. Let’s handle individual stories in […]

“Whichever story you believe, my mother, Chang’e, became immortal. As did I.”

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

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A child of the Moon Goddess, and an immortal herself,  Xingyin grows up on the moon, with just her mother & their family servant/long time companion. For the most part, the three of them are happy, if isolated. Xingyin senses a grief in her mother that she can’t quite explain, and within herself she feels a growing sense to reach out … for something more. She can’t label it, and her mother has warned her against reaching for it, but the pull towards that other […]

playing catch-up while playing bingo!

Kink: Stories by R. O. Kwon, Garth Greenwell

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Swapna Krishna, Jenn Northington

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen

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Hey y’all- long time, no read! I took some time off from reviewing while on vacation, then let vacation mind take over all of my non-work mind and found myself in a reviewing hole. Then, work swallowed me whole. I started writing this on August 9th. Just finishing it now on the 29th-Cait Also, I haven’t been reading reviews here either, so be prepared for a wave of comments coming your way! Good news: I truly enjoyed all seven of these books. One was a […]



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