Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“We’re meant to go. We’re not meant to stay forever.”

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

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Holiday reading is my favorite, and I was fortunate to have a rip-roaring book to tear through this holiday. I was also pleased, per the title of this post, that it ended and it will not continue as a duology or trilogy. Naomi Novik developed an imaginative world populated with  interesting characters and an engaging story. I’m quite sure the characters continued living their lives after I closed the book, but I am also happy that all necessary loose ends were wrapped up so satisfactorily. Briefly, Agnieszka […]

2018 – I Can’t Quit You

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This last year, like many Cannonballers, I read more books than I got a chance to review and so this final review of 2018, which will end up being my first review of 2019, is a sort of odds and ends.  Here in no particular order are books that I read while in China, books I read while on vacation in Northern Wisconsin, and books I read during my fall and spring semesters that I just didn’t have time to write about at the time. […]

Turning Silver Into Gold

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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I was so excited to get Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik as part of the book exchange because I loved Uprooted and had read and enjoyed the first book in Novik’s Temeraire series this summer. This is a loose (very loose) retelling of Rumpelstiltskin set in a past both realistic and imaginary and involving three young women.  Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, and she takes over her father’s business when his inability to demand payment leaves her family almost destitute and her […]

My favourite book this year

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Before this week, if you had told me that one of my favourite fantasy books I’ve ever read would be a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin of all things, I would have laughed in your face. But that is one way to describe Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, her follow-up to Uprooted (which was far and away one of my favourite books from a few years ago). Tonally, Spinning Silver is similar to Uprooted. Both feature a non-traditional European fantasy world, in that the Polish grounding for Uprooted and the Slavic folklore for Spinning Silver […]

Funny when you have to remind yourself about things that, not long ago, consumed your every thought.

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Brass – 3/5 Stars So on the one hand this book falls a little into the generic kind of circa 1990s second generation immigrant American novel that was big for a good while. I recently read Charming Billy by Alice McDermott, which does this very thing. And then on the other hand, this book is a solidly written novel. Or rather, it is a novel, but it a challenging kind of narrative. For one, the story is good and interesting, but also a little typical […]

Novik’s books aren’t just about magic; they are magic

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Uprooted was one of my favorite books of the last few years, and possibly ever. Since I’d never read Novik’s Temeraire books, I had no idea if it was a particular stroke of genius from her, or if she’s just always been consistently great and I never knew. I still haven’t read Temeraire, but now that she’s 2/2 for me with Spinning Silver, the imperative to do so becomes more pressing. Here is the summary from Goodreads: “Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, […]



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