Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Archives for December 2021

Suicide mission- drama and heroics

Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher

by 1 Comment

These two books form a duopoly – the Clocktaur war.  They are set in a fantasy world, which is well drawn and clearly has activities beyond what happens in this story. The premise of the story is that two countries/city states are at war.  Or rather, one city is sending strange machines that destroy everything towards the other city.  These are the Clockwork boys- mechanical things that appear to be made of bone, are covered with gears, and are very difficult to stop.  The front […]

Another Ilona Andrews series has stolen my heart

Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews

White Hot by Ilona Andrews

Wildfire by Ilona Andrews

Diamond Fire by Ilona Andrews

by 6 Comments

I discovered Ilona Andrews through Felicia Day’s book club. We read the first Kate Daniels book, Magic Bites. I didn’t quite get hooked, but Cannonball Read made me want to read more. Thanks to Malin, Emmalita, and Jen K for convincing me. I know you didn’t have to twist my arm! I had always planned to read their Hidden Legacy series. I even bought the most recent book last year. It wasn’t until Malin gifted me the first two books for the CBR12 book exchange that […]

The old west gets fenced in

The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry

by Leave a Comment

This slight and swift-moving novella follows Wyatt Earp and his best bud, Doc Holliday, around an increasingly settled west. In addition to these two main characters, who do little but gamble, drink and very occasionally get into some gunplay, we meet Wyatt’s wife, Jessie, a rancher, Charlie Goodnight, a madam, San Saba, and an intrepid lady reporter, Nellie Courtwright. Several of the other Earp brothers are mentioned but exist mostly off-screen, as impetus for the plot (Virgil become sheriff, Morgan opening a new saloon). McMurtry’s […]

A white whale that’s worth reading, years later

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

by Leave a Comment

I kept seeing this book everywhere when it came out/ won the Pulitzer in 2015. It has taken me a good number of years to get around to it, but I’m so glad I did. I picked this one up in November, which is Remembrance Day/ Veterans Day month, so a WWII book seemed fitting. Doerr’s story follows two adolescents living in challenging times on opposite sides of WWII: Marie-Laure, a blind girl living in Paris with her father, and Werner, an boy living in […]

Lost in (audiobook) translation

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Leave a Comment

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel of the Jazz Age hit a milestone birthday- 95!- meaning that it fell into the public domain at the end of 2020. One of the podcasts I listen to, Planet Money, used that milestone as a reason to release a podcast episode that was an audiobook of the novel, as read by its hosts. Its been years since I last read The Great Gatsby, and in that interim I’ve read Ernest Hemingway’s non-fiction account of his time in Paris in […]

Seemed like a good idea in 2005

Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts

by 1 Comment

Kevin Roberts is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi global marketing and I was gifted/ asked to read his book as a welcome/guide to my new job in tourism marketing. The basic thesis is that marketing needs to move beyond ‘trusted brands’ to ‘loved brands’, or ‘lovemarks’, that inspire feelings and an emotional bond in the consumer/audience. To get to this lovemark space, a company needs to build off of the earlier pillars that let brands become trusted (consistent, quality product) with somewhat amorphous additional […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo