Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Bothari43

CBR 6
CBR 7
CBR 8
CBR 9
CBR10 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant

When writing a genre-based lim'rick / Avoid lengthy 'post-apoc'lyptic' / Though CB reviews / Have broadened my views / My fave is still chick-written sci-fic (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Bothari43's Quick Questions interview.)

Bothari43's Reviews:

If you don’t love Book 1, do you keep going with Book 2?

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

by Leave a Comment

I have a coworker who says “I don’t want to get out over my skis” a lot. I had never heard that expression before, but this book really feels like it encapsulates the phrase. The ideas are interesting, and the two main characters are great, but it feels like the story and the writing never quite live up to the concept. This is an alternate history about the Underground Railroad and the uncertain times after the Civil War – except with magic. The story starts […]

Quick Questions with a Cannonballer: tiny_bookbot

by 4 Comments

What’s your favorite piece of literature (or theory, technique, etc.) to teach to your college students?  My favorite authors to teach are probably Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf. Jane Eyre is of course a book with some plot elements that really raise our eyebrows (Edward Fairfax Rochester what ARE you doing?!) but those same elements are what help it to teach well, because it gives us real stuff to dig into and discuss. Also, Brontë burns through loads of plot, which hooks my students, while also […]

Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan would be mortified by this sloppy excuse for a sci-fi romance

The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald

by 7 Comments

There I was, reading along on a pretty straightforward sci-fi tale of a badass commander, assigned to clean up a ragamuffin department on a spaceship while dealing with some serious trauma after her last ship exploded, when BLAMMO! All of a sudden I’m reading a romance? The hell? I’m not always anti-romance, and I love me some Georgette Heyer, but I am a little more anti-romance than usual right now (the divorce was final October 12, woooo!) and this was just so unexpected! It’s clumsily […]

Appreciating a book vs. liking it

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

by Leave a Comment

This is totally not my usual type of book, but a reader acquaintance is a big fan of the author, and I do like books about books, so I decided to give this one a try. It’s mostly lovely. The writing is so good – I can see why my acquaintance is a fan. Margaret is a self-sufficient introvert who works at the bookshop her father owns. She’s an amateur biographer, doing research for fun and occasionally writing an article or book about a person […]

Two duds; neither worthy of a rant

Avalanche by Patrick McManus

Quantum Moon by Denise Vitola

by 1 Comment

I grew up reading (and being read aloud to) Patrick McManus’s stories and essays about his (hopefully highly embellished) childhood, with such wonderful names as The Night the Bear Ate Goombah and Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink. When I saw that he’d written an actual book – a mystery novel – I had to give it a try. It was disappointing. A small-town sheriff hunts for the missing owner of a hunting lodge. It’s a little bit too sexist, a little bit too “aw shucks […]

Quick Questions with a Cannonballer: booktrovert

by 7 Comments

What’s the best book you’ve picked up as a result of a CBR recommendation/review? The September Book Club recommendations have been great so far – my favorite has been All Boys Aren’t Blue. Most recently I added The Journalist and the Murderer to my TBR, and it’s nearly at the top so I am looking forward to reading that soon! I am also currently listening to How to Be Perfect on audiobook in the car and really loving that (I also really loved The Good […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo