Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Define What You Mean by Vermin

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

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No matter what else has been going on recently, it has at least been a banner year for reading. Forget the top three, I’m going to have so much fun (difficulty) trying to whittle everything down to a top ten list. In the parlance of some of my students, there have been some absolute bangers.  The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes is absolutely one of those bangers. In some ways it feels like a throwback to the New Weird of the 2000’s; there is […]

Dead gods, decapitated corpses and dastardly ex-husbands

Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher

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CBR17 Bingo: Purple (most of the cover, barring the cover image, is a lovely lavender purple) Stephen is one of the paladins of the Saint of Steel (who was a god, despite the name), who died very suddenly and unexpectedly a few years back. No one thought gods could die, and a lot of his paladins killed themselves and caused massive amounts of damage when it happened. Now, Stephen and the six other paladins who remain are housed at the Temple of the White Rat […]

One million roses, each handpicked.

In Search of Perfumes: A Lifetime Journey to the Source of Nature's Scents by Dominique Roques

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Dominique Roque, a sourcing agent working in the perfume industry, recounts his travels and travails in pursuit of natural ingredients used in perfumes and dives into the storied history and often precarious methods of the producers of those raw materials. Perfume is a ubiquitous thing, to the point that you don’t really even register it. I have several bottles sitting on my dresser right now. But I’d never really thought about where the components of which they are composed of, which was why I found In […]

Not your average cookbook – for the seasoned (food pun!) cook looking to take it up a notch.

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This was the May pick of the Slow Food Chicago book club, one of the four (five?) book clubs that I am in. I sometimes lament that I have given away some choice in my reading to these clubs. Luckily this book was one I wouldn’t have picked up on my own, and I found it both interesting and inspiring. That is what I call a resounding success in the world of book clubs. This is a equal parts cookbook, historical text, and flavor bible. […]

A Story Focused on Scent… and It Stinks!

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Well this was… an experience. And I don’t know that it was a good one? It’s kind of funny, me reading a novel that is so focused on scent and a man with an extraordinary sense of smell, when I myself have an absolutely horrid sense of smell. Honestly, it has to be incredibly strong for me to ever notice any kind of scent (this started happening when I suddenly developed allergic polyps in my nose a few years ago, but anyways). But this book […]

Makes me want to go to the South of France

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Malorie Monsard returns to the south of France, where she grew up, having left on a hike after finishing high school and made enough money in Paris to put herself through business school. Having felt like an outcast while growing up, due to the legacy of her great-grandfather who betrayed resistance members to the Gestapo, and a narcissistic father who would manipulate her, her mother, her sisters and her grandmother, and charm, lie and steal his way until he finally met an unglamourous end in […]



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