Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fresh scares from a needed perspective

Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories by Dan SaSuWeh Jones

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Readers who have been craving a selection of tales reminiscent of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark should look no further than Living Ghosts and Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories, compiled by Ponca storyteller Dan SaSuWeh Jones.  Jones is a busy guy: he is a writer, producer, and artist; he’s worked as an Imagineer for Disney and produced for Sesame Street; he is a sculptor, a former Chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and he assembled this creepy collection of […]

“The problem with family is that they know where all the levers are that make you move. They’re usually the ones who installed the levers in the first place.”

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

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I picked this book up for a  read along with a few friends and it’s a great one for the season: one part silly, one part spooky, one part WAIT WHAT?! The general consensus from the group was that we liked it, but maybe didn’t love it and that it was a bit of a slow build, some felt it was too slow, I was along for the ride. Someone who had read other Kingfisher novels was surprised at how differernt it was in tone, […]

The very spirited spirit of the Dark Castle

Wolfgang in the Meadow by Lenny Wen

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All the wonderful goodness of this story is how the theme of being yourself has been illustrated in a manner that takes the story in a fresh new direction.. The story is cute, but we’ve seen it before. Wolfgang is a ghost who loves spooky things, and has worked very hard to become scary like his idol. But he also likes flowers, stargazing and being with his meadow friends hugging all the trees (even the trees with eyes). So Wolfgang in the Meadow is happy. […]

Cosplay jerk needs to get over herself

Dust and Grim by Chuck Wendig

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I’ve had Dust & Grim on my TBR for a little while, and when I was in the bookstore for one thing online said they had but they didn’t, I didn’t want to leave sans book, so I picked up this. Overall, it’s a decent spooky middle grade/YA tale about newly discovered siblings and the family business, a funeral home for the supernatural; don’t say “monster”, that’s offensive. The only real problem was that I did not ever really take a liking to the main […]

There’s space for more than one friendly ghost

Gilbert the Ghost by Guido Van Genechten

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Just in time to grab for your littles for spooky season -> Gilbert is an adorable ghost, who doesn’t really know how to ‘ghost’. And when he tries to learn, he just can’t get it right. And he… kind of doesn’t want to be spooky and scary and learn to shout BOOOO and haunt people & places. So when Gilbert is exiled to the abandoned tower, instead of learning to be scary in isolation, he instead makes a kitty cat friend named Meow, cleans and […]

CBR12 Book Bingo – Gateway

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

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What was it like? Living in that house. Home Before Dark is a gateway book for me for two reasons: 1. It’s my first introduction to Riley Sager, and now I am OBSESSED with his books; 2. It’s my intro into LOVING horror books. I have spent a great deal of my life afraid of the horror genre, due to a traumatic viewing of the original Carrie at an impressionable age. In my adult life, I read Carrie to try to rid myself of the deeply embedded fear […]



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