Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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CoffeeShopReader's Reviews:

Starting off the year with crayons

Crayola A Visual Biography of the World's Most Famous Crayon by Lisa Solomon, Crayola LLC

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Somehow I’ve started the past few years reviewing a non-fiction science-y book; this year the one I started was denser than anticipated and I haven’t finished it yet. Instead, I have Crayola: a Visual Biography of the World’s Most Famous Crayon. This sounded really interesting, but I have to admit I was a disappointed that it was more corporate propaganda than history/biography. In retrospect, that shouldn’t be too surprising given that the company is actually listed as a co-author. There is a little bit of […]

The most bland doomsday ever

Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom: A Novel of Retropolis by Bradley W. Schneck

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Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom: A Novel of Retropolis feels somewhat familiar, even though I’ve never read one of these novels; I’m pretty sure given the series/setting name (Retropolis), that’s intentional. If you think about one of those 1940s-ish era sci-fi or “world of the future” images or stories, you’ve basically got this novel, both in terms of written content and visuals (there are occasional full and partial page illustrations. Everything looks and sounds (word and image again) vaguely cartoony, kind of familiar, and […]

A cloth mage, a journalist, and some bad guys walk into a bar (this does happen at one point)

Innate Magic by Shannon Fay

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Innate Magic is an alternate history dark fantasy set in 20th century London. “The War” and associated arms races have happened and there’s the threat of some new major conflict on the horizon; this is mostly background though. Paul Gallagher and his best friend/found brother Thomas Dawes have just graduated magic college ready to pursue careers as Cloth Magicians; it seems like there’s basically 2 types of allowed magic: cloth and book. The ‘innate magic’ of the title is technically only allowed to one person, […]

Do not read this hungry

The Inspired Vegan by Bryant Terry

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Sometimes it’s hard to tell if The Inspired Vegan is a cookbook, a set of media recommendations, or a social justice manifesto. Bryant Terry is a recognized advocate for all 3 things though, so it makes sense he’d combine them. One of the more interesting things about this book is how it’s set up, seasonally but also by menu. Each menu has some noted inspirations, usually musical or literary but also sometimes a film gets in there too. Individual recipes also have their own soundtrack […]

Poetry that’s actually readable. Read it.

Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

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I suspect like most of the world, I learned who Amanda Gorman was within hours of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Turns out her collection Call us What We Carry is every bit as good as “The Hill We Climb” which is included as the final poem in the book. I should be up front, I don’t typically read poetry for fun, in part because I work with it so much professionally. Gorman’s book though is an exception, even more so in that it wasn’t a struggle […]

Colorful and Challenging Times in Olympus

Lore Olympus volume 1 by Rachel Smythe

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It seems like one of the favorite Greek myths to retell right now is the story of Hades and Persephone. I know of at least two currently underway on Webtoons: Punderworld and Lore Olympus. The latter recently came out in hard copy book form for the first 25 chapters and also won Goodreads’ Best Graphic Novel or Comic of 2021. I was a little surprised to see it on display at the library (I figured it would be checked out with a waiting list), so […]



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