Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

If you can’t beat em, make em bleed like pigs

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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Bingo category: Book Club (a whole bunch of them) The prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has a young Coriolanus Snow, the future president and villain of the first three books, as its protagonist. I didn’t really want to read it because. . . President Snow sucks. But I requested from my library anyway, just to see what I thought. And here we are. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place 64 years before The Hunger Games trilogy […]

Coriolanus release the fistful of cabbage into the pot of boiling water and swore that one day it would never pass his lips again.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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The book begins with Coriolanus Snow, 18 year old son of a somewhat fallen house, in secondary academy 11 or so years after the big war. They are soon coming up to the tenth annual Hunger Games, which are not yet the Hunger Games we all know, but barely more than a joyless, punitive bloodbath. For the first time, members of the academy will be selected to act as mentors to the tributes (yes like Haymitch would become) to both promote and care for tributes. […]

A Welcome Addition To YA Dystopias

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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Were we all a little burned out on dystopic YA fiction for a while there? Yeah, and the movie studios sure didn’t help. Yet here in 2020, something about a pandemic has made dystopic fiction that is specifically YA a lot more appealing though, so who better to reignite my interest in the genre than Susanne Collins herself? Did I get so obsessively into the Hunger Games trilogy back in ’12 that I neglected to finish my Masters thesis on time and had to take […]

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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So because of the recent news of the prequel book(s?) coming out in the next few months, and especially given the chosen subject of those books, I wanted to revisit the series again and since every library still has 100 copies of each of them, seemed perfectly doable. I, for one, am more interested in the new because she’s chosen to look into Snow as a character more, and explore some of the early days of Panem. For one, from what I recall about the […]

May the odds be ever in your favor

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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Bingo Square: YOUTHS! As punishment for a rebellion, the 12 districts of the nation of Panem must put forward two tributes every year for the Hunger Games. One boy and one girl selected at random must fight to the death live on air for the entertainment of those in the Capitol. 16 year old Katniss Everdeen is used to fighting for survival. Her father died when she was young, leaving her to take care of her mother and sister, Prim. She hunts in the woods […]

This was heart wrenching

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I have finally reached the end of “The Hunger Games” trilogy.  The Hunger Games and Catching Fire were revelatory in the richness of the stories compared to the movies and Mockingjay was no exception.  The movie adaptation of Mockingjay left so little impression that I had forgotten it was split into two movies.  Having read the entire series I find myself a little surprised that it was ever adapted for the screen.  Much of the books are dark and depressing as we watch Katniss deal with PTSD and in the final volume […]



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