Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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My mind is blown, and not because I’ve been sampling magic mushrooms

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

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I have read many books on science and natural history, but few have made me stop reading every few pages to look up and declare to whomever is within hearing distance (currently, my husband and cats, because we’re in a pandemic), “This is fascinating.” I don’t care if you’ve never read a book about nature in all your previous existence. Entangled Life will ensorcel you with tales of carnivorous mushrooms, zombie fungi, acid trips, and superhero microorganisms that could end up saving the planet. If […]

Swim, fly, hop or grab a squirrel, but give this book a try

Wild Fairies V02 Lily’s Water Woes by Brandi Dougherty

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I was looking through some older reader copies the other day and came across Lily’s Water Woes by Brandi Dougherty. Unknown to me, it was volume 2 in the Wild Fairies series. I thought it was odd a few pages in when a few things were mentioned (about a festival, decorating a tree) and thought, “Maybe this is a second book.” And when I started to investigate, I did notice the big number two on the cover (oops!) However, even though it is part of […]

Here Birdie, birdie bird!

How to Find a Bird by Jennifer Ward

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How to Find a Bird is a great non-fiction book presented as a traditional picture book story. Jennifer Ward’s text is about an all-knowing narrator taking you (and the characters of the book) on a journey throughout almost all the known birds. Some will be familiar due to your own area, while others might not be. There are even a few pages dedicated to birds that have gone extinct. Each page has facts or pieces of information on birds, how to see and hear birds […]

Picture books are fun

Packs: Strength in Numbers by Hannah Salyer

Share Some Kindness, Bring Some Light by Apryl Stott

Macaroon Mouse the Christmas Eve Adventure by Nancy Brigham

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I cannot help myself. Picture books are fun. They are easy and help me think, “Well by George the III, I just accomplished something!” And these three books are ones that I accomplished. Packs: Strength in Numbers by Hannah Salyer (Rating 4) The book starts off with a simple poem like sentence about the connections of together; then BOOM! Sayler starts with examples of animals and their connections to the theme. By the end of our story, we go back to the simple line of […]

I admit didn’t finish, but you know you’ve a hit when the first 4 pages have nothing horrible about them

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver

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I am not sure what to say about Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver that has not already been said. Therefore, I will write about the feelings I had and my “Mary Oliver story.” Right after Oliver passed, the local poetry group did a last-minute event to read some of their favorite Mary Oliver poems, read some of their own poetry and to celebrate Oliver. My story is this was the first time I had heard a poem by her. Or at least, realized […]

Hear the Fearsome War Cry of the River Otter! Ic-yang!

Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson

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Set in rural Devon and written in 1928, this is the life story of Tarka, the river otter, written as an unsentimental biography, from birth to death.  Williamson had an unusual talent of presenting the life of a wild creature just as is.  Well, there are some names, but that is only so that one can distinguish one creature from another.  Otherwise, they are very much not anthropomorphized.   The language, though, is a delight.  It’s not written in a dialect, per se, but rather […]



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