Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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An Immersive World

The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope

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I love a good immersive world in fantasy and speculative fiction, where you feel like you could be in the setting. The Monsters We Defy takes place in Washington, DC in 1925, and Clara Johnson, the main character, can communicate with spirits. I listened to the audio book of this, and Shayna Small does an exceptional job with the voices and the setting and making you invested in the story. I am not surprised to see this won the Audie award for best audio book […]

Spirits and animals of the immortals and two tough girls

Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong

Empire of Night by Kelley Armstrong

Forest of Ruin by Kelley Armstrong

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I can’t remember how I found this trilogy, but I borrowed this first book from my library as an audiobook.  The narrator had an awesome voice and read the story really well.  It’s amazing how a narrator can make a book so much more enjoyable. Anyway, I LOVED this series. We start out visiting a group of prisoners who are being banished / exiled to the forest of the dead.  We’re not really sure what that means, but we know it’s bad.  Ronin is the […]

A few slow moments but overall worth pushing through

The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk

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BINGO – Free (picked up from my local library) Beatrice Clayborn must get married. She must. Getting married is the only way to save her family from financial ruin. But to get married means that she will have to give up her passion and goals: to become a great mage and the first female mage. Complicating her situation further is Ianthe Lavan, an extremely wealthy, handsome, compassionate man determined to win her hand in marriage, and his sister Ysbeta who wants the same things as […]

Support trans youth. Believe trans youth. Love trans youth.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

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Holy crap. Stop reading this review and just go read this book instead. Trust me. Okay, you’re still here. Fine. Yadriel wants to prove himself to his family. Prove himself as a brujo, as a capable addition to the family business, and, most importantly, as a man. Yadriel is a young, high school aged trans boy in a family of brujxs. The men are all brujos who help spirits cross over to the afterlife, and the women are brujas who heal those still living. Yadriel is […]

Six Drinks and A Few Empires

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

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I need to clean off my coffee table. I remembered something from A History of the World in 6 Glasses, but then couldn’t find the book to confirm it. I figured maybe I’d finished it way earlier than I thought and had given it away. But no, it was just buried under stuff on the coffee table. Turns out, I hadn’t quite finished it either. The premise is a history of cultural development around the world as it connects to the general history of the […]

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” – Mark Twain

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Like many attorneys musicians men humans, I like drinkin’ ‘cause it’s fun. I am adept with beer, malt liquor, gin, rum, absinthe, the occasional fermented millet drink, and moonshine. Sadly, however, the drink that I wanted to love more than any has eluded me. That, friends, is whiskey. Despite my many attempts to sip the amber nectar of my heroes of yore, I simply have not been able to stomach whiskey without quickly developing a sour stomach and a headache. It tasted like peanut oil. […]



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