Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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There are only two kinds of story worth telling: the ones that send children to sleep, and the ones that send men to war. I need the second.

The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow

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Well good thing there was a bingo square for ‘Craft’ this year, because I have not read a book as well crafted as The Everlasting for a very long time. Alix E. Harrow has always been an ambitious writer, but here she really exceeds herself. The Everlasting is, at its core a love story, but I’m sort of reluctant to categorize it as just a romance; it’s so, so much more. Around it’s romantic core, it is a story about the power of myth-making, nationalism, […]

“The past cannot be cured”- Elizabeth I, Queen of England

Shadow of Night: A Novel (Book Two of the ALL SOULS SERIES) by Deborah Harkness

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I read A Discovery of Witches two years ago, and was suitably unimpressed. (Well, not unimpressed, more like I loathed it.) Then last year, for some unknown reason (I blame having bronchitis and being in the mood to mindlessly binge watch), I watched the entire series on Netflix. (I also watched Shadow & Bone, about 11 seasons of Supernatural, and all of Bridgerton that was out at the time; don’t judge me for any of it. I told you, I was delirious with bronchitis.) So […]

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 […]

How far would you go to change history?

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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CBR18 BINGO: Repair, because the main character goes back in time to try to repair the damage caused by JFK’s assassination I had a high-school English teacher who mused that she didn’t think Stephen King would ever be counted among the “classics” because the sheer volume of his output inevitably led to some substandard attempts. Plus, there was the whole tie in with movie deals that undermined his legitimacy (this was back in the ’80s, when it wasn’t necessarily a given that a popular book […]

Please, DON’T send in the clown

Hamlet is Not OK by R.A. Spratt

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As a teen (at least 13 and up), Hamlet is Not OK by R.A. Spratt and I would have been friends. This is because I, too, would have had some of the naive ideas about violence and mental health our main character has. Now, I still am not keen on violence as the solution and I understand the difficulties of mental health, but if you change Hamlet (and SPOILER, they do) you have changed practically everything that has come after that was inspired by it, […]

Literature will/might/won’t Save the World. Maybe. I’m not sure the book ever told me.

The Heavens by Sandra Newman

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This book takes some really big swings and while it doesn’t miss, it does seemingly bunt the ball. Commenting on the War on Terror & its justifications in the early 2000s – Check. Historical drama featuring Shakespeare – Check. Questioning if Time Travel does actually happen or is just in the mind of the protagonist a la Twelve Monkeys – Check. I could go on. There’s so much happening here that I found myself skimming backwards in the book like it’s a Choose Your Own […]



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