Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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This was a miss for me.

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

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This was ruined for me by the writing style :\ I feel like it actually walks the line between being written in a style that just wasn’t for me, and actually being poorly put together. Which is a shame! Because this premise has real meat to it. The titular Rukhsana Ali is a Bengali-American teenager, the daughter of Bengali immigrants, and also identifies as a lesbian. She has a girlfriend she’s in love with who is white, and they plan to go away to California […]

Not to my taste.

Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land by N. Scott Momaday

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I think Momaday is just not an author for me. I felt similarly ‘meh’ about his Pulitzer prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn, when I read it in graduate school. His stuff just does not resonate with me. This is a book of prose poems centered on Momaday’s contemplation of the natural world, and in specific the American West, where he has lived his entire life. It’s a small book, focused on Momaday’s own feelings toward the earth, and eventually, humanity’s. No surprise, the central […]

A good young adult book that I probably read too late in life.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan

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I’m rounding down on this one for now, after weeks (months) of letting it sit in limbo because I couldn’t make up my mind how I felt about it. But this is a true 3.5 star book right here. Parts of it I loved and found very funny and charming and parts of irritated the hell out of me. The ending is very heartwarming and the characters are ultimately lovable. I think I might have just missed my window on loving this one. Too bad, […]

Not a great collection of stories, in my opinion.

A Universe of Wishes by ed. Dhonielle Clayton

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This was a pretty disappointing collection. I only enjoyed a handful of stories. I think the thing that frustrates me the most about YA fantasy and sf recently is that these are the genres of the imagination, and yet so many authors keep telling the same old stories, even, as it turns out, when those stories are populated by a diverse cast of characters, featuring characters of many races, genders, and sexualities. Some of these stories were dull and uninspired, some I thought were just […]

“Power taken and not returned incurs a debt. And the universe, and the debt, will always come to collect, one way or another.” #CBRBINGO – Mythic

Legendborn (Legendborn, #1) by Tracy Deonn

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This takes tired YA fantasy tropes and makes them feel so fresh. Just a super solid book and I can’t wait to see where she takes the rest of the series. So I finished this book back in July and I was riding high off of it, but I procrastinated the review, so my middle-aged brain is having to strain a little on this one. Bottom line before you read any further, if you normally stay away from YA fantasy like I do, because of […]

“I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries.” #CBRBINGO – Fauna

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

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Virgil Wounded Horse is an enforcer on the Rosebud reservation, the home of the Lakota in South Dakota. Due to some fucked up laws, felonies are subject to federal prosecution, and the feds refuse to prosecute many serious crimes on the reservation, leaving murders, rapes, you name it, uninvestigated. The residents turn to Virgil. For some extra cash, he’ll give the perpetrator a beat down, oftentimes a very violent one. Vigilante justice is more reliable than the so-called justice of white people. The plot kicks […]



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