Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Drop-kick That Magic Lamp into Mount Doom

The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin (editors)

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Short story collections are like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you have to gnaw some nuts and chews to eventually find that chocolate truffle. That said, The Djinn Falls in Love is phenomenal. Six of the twenty-one stories are among the best short stories I have read. Ever. (Jhumpa Lahiri, I’m sorry to report that you’ve been bumped.)  The editors’s international ensemble of authors clearly did their research, populating their confident tales with every manner of djinn, jinn, and genie. Some lie in wait in an unexpected vessel; some walk around passing for human; others get a kick out of […]

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1/17/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:4 |

Good, but wants more meat…

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

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Binti is a mathematical prodigy – a Harmonizer – from a tribe, the Himba, that reveres its homeland so much that they don’t really leave their land, let alone the planet. But Binti wants to attend Oomza Uni, and as said Uni as actually a planet in itself, to do so she’s going to have to bid goodbye to not just her family, but her homeland too. Which she does, sneaking out in the middle of the night. Binti soon finds herself on the ship to Oomza, amidst her classmates but still viewed as something as an outsider – the […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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1/14/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:4 |

Not flawless, but Binti and Katniss could totally hang

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

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Usually when I review a book that’s already been covered on CBR multiple times, I try not to read anybody else’s reviews until mine is written. This time, however, I read everything the search function could find for me. I remembered from headlines that some people loved this Hugo/Nebula-winning book, and some people did not. I listened to the audio version on my way to Thanksgiving, and enjoyed it, so was curious what others thought. I think the audio version may have helped, having Binti talk to me while I was on the road. I liked her very much, and […]

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12/5/2018 's CBR10 Review No:24 |

Better than the Potter comparison

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

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I read this book because I started following Dr. Okorafor on Twitter a few years ago.  I don’t remember exactly what made me decide to follow her but I do know that part of it was due to my desire to avoid insularity.  That and I’d heard great things about her books.  I’ve already read the first two novellas in her Binti series; the third won a Hugo Award this year! Akata Witch, if I were to grossly over simplify, is a different take on the young person discovers magic is real and they must adapt to this new world. […]

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11/24/2018 's CBR10 Review No:41 |

The power of good-bye

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

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CBR10Bingo: Brain Candy (BINGO!) Before this year, I wasn’t much of a YA reader. I saw myself as more of a Serious Reader, too serious for the frivolity of YA lit. And while my favorite books are still likely to be denser and heavier literary fiction and hard sci-fi, I’ve come to enjoy the balance that YA brings to my library with the quicker read and lighter tone even when the subject matter isn’t so light. Thus, the Brain Candy square was always going to be a YA book. It was just a matter of picking one.  Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata […]

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10/28/2018 's CBR10 Review No:58 |

Not what I was expecting

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

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Spoiler warning! In my explanation of what worked and didn’t for me in this story, I will be going into plot specific details. If you want to approach this story completely unspoiled, you may just want to read the first few paragraphs. Binti is the first of her people, the Himba, to be offered a place at the Oomza University, the finest in the galaxy. She pretty much runs away, knowing that her decision to take her place at the university might mean she is no longer welcome back with her family. While the prospect of going far away is daunting, […]

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6/14/2018 's CBR10 Review No:44 |

I wanted to like it …

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

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I didn’t read this one immediately after downloading it, so when the novel didn’t initially click for me, I blamed myself for forgetting that the main character was 12.  I had been thinking of it as a YA novel, but with the ages being around 12, it isn’t quite YA, which of course leads to slightly misaligned expectations.  “Oh,” I thought, “when they meant it’s like Harry Potter, they didn’t just mean magic, they meant age-wise, too.” However, when the novel continued to not quite work for me, I remembered that I liked the Percy Jackson novels and the Harry […]

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4/3/2018 's CBR10 Review No:36 |

We prefer to explore the universe by traveling inward, as opposed to outward

Binti; Binti: Home; Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor

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Binti So something that I really liked about this novella is that there is almost no world building. This will come up in another review I will be writing later too. Too often, a new inventive world is described in a too detailed way where simply telling the story and setting up what we need to know as we go will be much much better, and there’s a more satisfying story that way. And so this one does. The only real issue I have with it is that there’s level of derivativeness here which doesn’t mar it so much as […]

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3/30/2018 's CBR10 Review No:83 |


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