Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“Happy wedding”, Evemer said. “I got you this door.” (Bingo)

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

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CBR16 Bingo: Golden Gold in the title and gold as a pivotal part of the plot. Also pretty much all of the central characters are solid gold. Kadou is the younger brother of the sultan of Arasht, and is delighted that she’s just given birth to a healthy baby, putting him further down the line of succession. Unfortunately, the baby’s father, a powerful ambassador at court, believes Kadou to be jealous and a threat to both his baby niece and his sister. Nothing could be […]

Rolling Heads

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel

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What you must never forget about this one is that you’re still in Wolf Hall. That’s trite, I know! But I can’t think of what else to say because as I reoriented my perspective on reading this, its power really hit me. I read Wolf Hall five years ago, at a different period in my life and thought it was just ok. Appreciated what it was doing but I didn’t have the focus to engage with it like I should have. Time and age tend to confer […]

The Dark Corners of the Past

Great Scandals of the Victorians by Debbie Blake

Public Faces, Secret Lives by Wendy L. Rouse

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Great Scandals of the Victorians: Disreputable Stories from the Royal Court to the Stage – 3.5 stars For all that Victorians had a reputation for being straitlaced, they had their fair share of scandals – and some of them ended up having major effects on contemporary society, sometimes even driving forth social changes which still affect us today. I love a good gossip session about people I’ve never met, which is why history is one of my favorite subjects. In this book, we learn about […]

A History of Royal Intermarriage and its Consequences

Royal Inbreeding and Other Maladies by Juliana Cummings

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Royalty was supposed to rule by divine right and meant to preserve their bloodline, but in their zeal to do so lay the seeds of the madness and maladies that plagued many royal houses. It’s always fun to read about mad royals. Removed by time and societal changes, they don’t feel real enough to be sorry for, and so you can fully indulge in ogling at the bizarre stories without shame. And with unlimited money and power at their disposal, there’s a lot of bizarre […]

Celebrating

Queer Heroes: Meet 53 LGBTQ Heroes From Past and Present! by Arabelle Sicardi

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Over 50 famous and maybe not as famous people of the GLBTQ+ community are in the pages of the book Queer Heroes: Meet 53 LGBTQ Heroes From Past and Present!  While I did not count, I would guess at least half or more of the people mentioned are not mainstream (but known in certain circles) or might be the first time the reader (and most) have heard of/about them. Of course there were several more well known (Freddie Mercury, Ellen DeGeneres, David Bowie (who never […]

January 2024 Leftovers

The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of the Anglo-Saxons and the Rise of the Normans by Jim Bradbury

Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block

Charlesgate Confidential by Scott von Doviak

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell

The Trouble With Peace by Joe Abercrombie

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

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A lot of folks said this month was slow but I thought it flew by… The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of the Anglo-Saxons and the Rise of the Normans *** Bit too stuffy and academic but gave me a great outline as to the importance of the Battle and its outcomes. Time to Murder and Create **** This is the second time I’ve come out of a Matthew Scudder re-read with a better impression than the first time I read it. How it bodes for the […]



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