Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch

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Well, my library is being watched at least. I keep reading myself in circles; themes from one book bleed into another; people, places, statements, snippets of songs- this year is becoming one giant, roiling, swirling brew of a book. Peter Grant and the Falcon Family (tm tm tm!) are back in London, up to their necks in the Thames and sinking fast. Luckily, the river is full of gods who are just as willing to save them as they are to let them drown. Last […]

There isn’t really peace when you are done

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

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4.5 stars Spoiler warning! This is the second book in a series, and this review will contain spoilers for the first book, Carry On. If you haven’t already read it, you should do yourself a favour and do so. Simon Snow was the Chosen One, destined to bring an end to the threat to all magic. Of course, it turned out that he himself was in fact the thing that was threatening the magic in the first place, and his mentor/father figure (and actual biological father, although none […]

If you’re going to ban Harry Potter, at least come up with a better reason

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

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Bingo 23 Banned Book The Harry Potter series has been challenged for many things including glorifying witchcraft, encouraging bad behavior like disobeying rules and lying, and for being un-Christian. This recent ban though is almost laughable, but it did make the international news (click for link): Reverend Dan Reehill, head St Edward Catholic School in Nashville, Tennessee, apparently decided that the spells presented in the series were real. He supposedly consulted the Vatican on this, and had the books removed from his school library so […]

Beginning of the end, in which a series redeems itself

Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Legends by Lydia Sherrer

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I’ve almost got my ‘started before 2019 began’ pile cleared out. This is the first of the final four: Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Legends. This book was a bit of a surprise in a few ways, most of them good. This was book 4 in a series I was starting to get annoyed with. Some structural patterns and a seriously pet-peeving plot development cliché seemed to be developing. I was ready to give up. I’ve mentioned the structure in reviews of previous volumes, but […]

Family Matters and Magic

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This is effectively one review for two books because really, it should be one book, not two. Let it be known I find these entertaining easy reads, but there are some structural and character problems that are really starting to annoy me. 3.5 stars combined. The continuation of gradually revealing more about the world really develops in Revelations, along with what is pretty obviously the main conflict of the series: villainous wizard want to discover ‘wizarding’ gene and use this information to find and wake […]

My favorite not my favorite

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Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors of all time. I’ve read the Discworld series in its entirety and several of Pratchett’s other works as well. When he passed away in March 2015, the literary world lost one of the contemporary greats, but it seems he left a lot of unpublished things or just works in progress or to be collected. I was looking forward to Dragon’s at Crumbling Castle and Other Stories, which is a collection of juvenalia fiction. Some of the stories […]



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