Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“Alright. Let’s go rescue a corpse from some shrubbery.”

The Resurrectionist: A Novel by A. Rae Dunlap

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Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828. Naïve but determined James Willoughby has abandoned his posh, sheltered life at Oxford to pursue a lifelong dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. (Side effect of this being that his father apparently drops dead of the horror, a fact that his family will never let him live down. Ah well; you win some, you lose some.) Edinburgh is where medical discovery is at in the age of New Enlightenment, and the city’s university offers everything James desires to get his career going—except […]

Everything I’ve done since losing you has been about getting back to you.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

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CBR18 Bingo: Maps – Kite and Joe follow and escape from the war by attacking and fleeing different harbours all over Europe. He put his hand out and Kite shook it. Joe had the alien thought that people here must never have touched each other otherwise. There was no kiss, no hug, nothing. They were all oysters sealed in their stiff manners. ― Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms I tried to let you go, before. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d forget so quickly. ― Natasha […]

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

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The Crow Road is about about Prentice McHoan’s preoccupation with death, sex, his relationship with his father, unrequited love, sibling rivalry, a missing uncle, cars, alcohol and other intoxicants, and God, against the background of the Scottish landscape. And doesn’t that just sound like so much fun? Or maybe just a Scottish take off on Nine’s “Folies Bergeres” Necrophorus: The trouble with Contini, he’s the king of mediocrities, A second-rate director who believes that he is Socrates. He never makes a “movie” or a “picture?” […]

The One Where the Gang Heads to Scotland

Stone & Sky by Ben Aaronovitch

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I zipped through the Rivers of London series last summer and loved it. Then while browsing through the library I found the newest book 10! A very merry un-birthday to me! Our old friend Peter Grant is no longer the wide-eyed little copper we first met. He’s grown into the Starling, an apprentice of the Nightingale but definitely a power in his own right. He’s still with his lovely wife, the river Beverly, and with the two year time jump since the last novel the […]

‘The Idea Is, Even if I Do Explode, I’m Only Going to Be a Risk to Sheep’

Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch

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Been a while! I can’t believe that we are at now ten books into the Rivers of London series. This is another one of those urban fantasy-slash-detective series that I’ve been enjoying over the years. And like some of the others, Rivers of London has 1) experienced a bit of a gap between novels (three years) and 2) reached a bit of a pivotal point in the over-reaching narrative.  Let’s get the biggest thing out of the way first: Stone and Sky is a Rivers […]

“I subscribe to a theory that answers cannot hide from us forever if we seek them long enough.”

Ink & Sigil by Kevin Hearne

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Al is one of five magical scribes in the world, charged with upholding the law between the mortal world and the higher planes where gods and mythical creatures reside. When his latest apprentice turns up dead, he discovers that he may have been trafficking the fae – and as his mentor, it is Al’s duty to make things right. This is the first book in the series, which is a spin-off of Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles. I have not read those books, but Ink and Sigil works […]



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