Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Nerds vs Nazis

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham

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As promised by the title, Graham’s Book and Dagger delivers plenty of stories of academics and librarians helping the Allies in World War II through espionage and other covert ways. As the book notes, the best spy isn’t someone dashing like a James Bond. It’s someone who can’t even get a waiter’s attention. Bring in the nerds! No one can get away with collecting books, or asking questions about train gauges, or fiddling with a dam, quite like a nerd. In my mind, though, the […]

It’s not a crime to feel joy, even when things seem hopeless.

Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment #1) by Rebecca Ross

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CBR18 Bingo: Refuge – Iris and Roman find refuge in their correspondence. The days to come will only grow darker. And when you find something good? You hold on to it. You don’t waste time worrying about things that won’t even matter in the end. Rather, you take a risk for that light. ― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals Let us make our names exactly what we want them to be. ― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt are the same age and […]

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Abduct

Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers

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July 18, 2021 Ginny Brandon, a senator’s daughter, is sent to nominally ride a wagon train to California, but is actually smuggling gold to Mexico to support the Emperor’s cause. She is relentlessly drawn to the wagon train guide, Steve Morgan. But unbeknownst to her, Steve is actually a spy intent on thwarting her father’s plans. What can I say about this book? It’s a wild ride, but one I never wanted to get off of. Ginny and Steve are a quintessential, swashbuckling romance hero […]

Welcome to the land of missed opportunity

The Camino by Anya Nieuwierra

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Lotte’s husband is a cancer survivor. Like many cancer survivors, the experience has altered him and to celebrate his survival, he decides to walk a pilgrimage: the Camino de Santiago, which runs from Le-Puy-en-Velay in central France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He sets off in good spirits, but then out of the blue Lotte receives word that her husband has taken his own life on the trail. A year later, to mourn him but also to discover what has happened, Lotte follows his […]

I had a lot of clever titles for this review but none of them fit.

Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan and Noah Stollman

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Recently I was emailing a representative of a publisher my work deals with. We were talking about a book dealing with the 12 Day War between Iran and Israel that is coming out this fall. I mentioned I would like to find something that showed the other side of the story as well. I figure one should get all the information one can and you’ll probably have a better understanding of things as a whole. The person mentioned they liked Rutu Modan. However, she was […]

“Lying is like farming, or draining marshland, or terracing a hillside or planting a grove of peach trees. It’s an attempt to control your environment and make it better.”

Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead by K.J. Parker

Saevus Corax Captures the Castle by K.J. Parker

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Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead – 3.25 stars Saevus Corax just wants to be left in peace to operate his battlefield salvage company, but when his past comes calling, he must admit to possession of his former name, and deal with all the troubles that are still brewing in that prior life. Saevus Corax is an interesting character, a fast-talking rogue with a talent for survival and a desire to keep eking his living without getting embroiled in major geopolitical issues which is, unfortunately, […]



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