Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Well, it has a nice theme

Mermaid and Pirate by Tracey Baptiste

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Picture books are my current go-to as they make me happy. They are quick, usually fun, and you can say, “By George the Third! I have finished a book!” And that sense of accomplishment is a real mood booster! However, I read a book that gave me the “I finished a book feeling” but also had a “That was not what I needed” feeling as well. I will start with the negatives of Mermaid and Pirate. This picture book has some bumps with the flow […]

It’s the biggest and most dangerous dating show in the universe!

Sweep of the Heart by Ilona Andrews

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This is not the place to start The Innkeeper Chronicles, as it’s the sixth installment overall (four full books and a novella come before it). This story has a LOT of callbacks to previous stories, so just start with Clean Sweep if you haven’t tried this yet. Innkeepers Dina DeMille and Sean Evans are still trying to recover from the last cosmic adventure that taxed them when they discover that Wilmos, the aging werewolf who’s pretty much Sean’s surrogate grandfather has been abducted. The traces […]

“Funny who gets to call themselves a hero, too.”

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

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I don’t even know how to begin describing this book. It’s like mashing a noir detective novel with a queer pirate fantasy and adding in a dash of horror. It’s weird and sort of wonderful and while parts didn’t work for me, the ones that did worked really, really well. While this is the first in a series, enough is resolved to give it a very satisfactory ending. Yat lived on the streets of Hainak after the death of her father, and joined the police […]

Shiver me timbers and pull up a cutlass

When I Was a Pirate by Tom Silson

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You can take When I Was a Pirate with you can take this book with a shot of rum and coke and say it is a true whale of a tail. Or you can believe that the grandfather has had some far out times in his life.  I mean, does the grandfather in the story tell the truth? Was he a grand old pirate in his youth? (Tattoos seem to confirm this.) Or is he just diving deep into a bit of exaggeration?  I would […]

Yo ho ho and a slice of politics

Geronimo Stilton Reporter #10 Blackrat’s Treasure by Geronimo Stilton

Mayor Good Boy by Dave Scheidt

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Two books I read that are cute but not “all time faves” for me are the two below. As an adult reading, they were nice quick reads, but for the child reader it will make them sit and read. Reluctant or seasoned veternas alike will find these delightful. I have seen the books Geronimo Stilton for several years now, but never felt I needed to read them. I knew the types of kids that were reading them; therefore, I could easily recommend the books to […]

Two Entirely Different Kinds of Pirates

Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao by Helaine Becker, Ill. Liz Wong

What Isabella Wanted: Isabella Stewart Gardner Builds a Museum by Candace Fleming Ill. Matthew Cordell

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But Fortune cares nothing for your dreams. She takes up your life in her cup and shakes it so hard your teeth rattle in your head and your heart roars like a dragon in your chest. Then she throws the bones onto her table of lacquer and jade. Your fate is sealed. – Helaine Becker, Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao Did I know much about Zheng Yi Sao before I read this? Only that she existed, reigned over the South China Sea […]



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