Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“Why am I only seen as someone who needs and not someone who can give?”

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

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Piecing Me Together is a 2017 YA novel, a Newbery Honor book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. Jade, a teenager from Portland, Oregon, tells her story of being poor, black and on scholarship to prestigious St. Francis school on other side of town. Jade is an excellent student and an artist who has much to offer and who is eager to break out of her neighborhood.  As she navigates two worlds — the neighborhood called the New Columbia and the world of […]

You’re in a Cult — Call your dad! And other life advice from Karen and Georgia

Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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Where my Murderinos at? Part self-help book (kinda), part memoir (mostly), and all kinds of things you didn’t know about Georgia and Karen (and probably weren’t afraid to ask), Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered is a breezy, easy read with some serious points underlying all the humor — a lot like the “My Favorite Murder” podcast only written down in a version you can hold! We have gone from living inside your headphones to pouring ourselves out onto the page like a couple of […]

“Just because you’re the same kind doesn’t mean you’re all one happy family. The important thing is to understand each other. That’s love!”

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly: A Novel by Sun-Mi Hwang

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This short and utterly beautiful story is about following one’s dreams and maintaining hope in the face of despair. It is a meditation on family, motherhood, and selfless love. Published in South Korea in 2000, it became a bestseller and a classic of Korean literature. Hwang has written dozens of books and she has received multiple awards for them. The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is poignant and gorgeously written, with translation by Chi-Young Kim and illustrations by Japanese artist Nomoco. While this might […]

The Marriage Trap

The Widows of Malabar Hill: A Perveen Mistry Novel Book 1 by Sujata Massey

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According to the book jacket, this is “a mystery of 1920s India” and that was enough to make me very curious. “The Widows of Malabar Hill” is a murder mystery, and a fine one at that, but it is also a picture of Bombay (not sure why it’s Bombay and not Mumbai) shortly after WWI from the point of view of a young Parsi woman named Perveen Mistry. Through her, Sujata Massey immerses the reader in a world that straddles the traditional and the modern. […]

“A small creature swallowed whole by a monster…”

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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“Horror,” Laura Miller says in the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of The Haunting of Hill House, “turns on the dissolution of boundaries […] between the outside of the body and everything that ought to stay inside.” Maybe the way horror lurks in liminal spaces, only rarely coming right out in the open, has something to do with how much I enjoy the genre. And The Haunting of Hill House serves masterfully as our guide to those cracked and uncertain places.  

The real monsters aren’t the ones you think

Strange Practice: A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel by Vivian Shaw

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With summer approaching, you might be looking for something fun to take to the beach, and Vivian Shaw’s first novel in what is going to become a Greta Helsing series would be a fine choice. Set in contemporary London, this novel introduces us to Dr. Helsing, daughter of the famous Dr. Wilfert Helsing and doctor to the monster community. Mummies, ghouls, vampires (and vampyres— there’s a difference) all know they can count on Greta and her staff to ably and discreetly guide them back to […]



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