Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About esme

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Loves to read. Loves to travel. Doesn't get to do either enough.

esme's Reviews:

“They lead ‘still’ lives, waiting.”

Still Life by Louise Penny

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My husband and I started watching the Three Pines series on Amazon Prime, which was enjoyable; Chief Inspector Gamache, played by Alfred Molina, is a delight of eyebrows. The television series reminded me that I likely hadn’t read Ms. Penny’s earlier works though I have picked up the occasional book in an airport bookstore but have moved haphazardly through the series; thus, I decided to start at the first book. Sill Life draws Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec to the delightfully bucolic […]

“But magic came, ever his friend…”

Sorceror to the Crown by Zen Cho

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Woot! First review of the year! I must have read a review of Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown on here (perhaps yesnopemaybe‘s), and so thanks for that. Zacharias Wythe, a formerly enslaved Black sorcerer has been named the Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers, a group that regulates magic in England. His ascendancy is the source of gossip due to his race and the manner in which he claimed the title and machinations by the other sorcerers. To make his job worse, magic is […]

…kurou, which could be translated to ‘suffering’

Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara

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BINGO!!!! Bingo tile: monster; the first big monster is the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans from (primarily) the West Coast and the subsequent theft of their property by white Americans; the second monster would spoil the mystery, but is monstrous! In Clark and Division, Naomi Hirahara crafts a mildly diverting mystery and, more compellingly, a moving portrait of the tremendous challenges facing Japanese and Japanese Americans post-Pearl Harbor. Aki Ito, her parents, and her older sister, Rose, are forcibly interned in Manzanar after Pearl […]

“Only problem is, he also has a terrible case of…the frets.”

Stuntboy, In the Meantime by Jason Reynolds

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Bingo tile: Star (I know, I know, but I am determined to Bingo this year!) both for the amazing production on this auidobook and because Zola and Portico are stars I am doing something(s) completely different (for me) with this book, so let’s see how it goes! I am reviewing a kids book that I listened to with my son (who is 9), and I will do my best to reflect my experience and what I heard from him. Stuntboy, In the Meantime, by Jason […]

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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Although I saw all of the rave reviews (‘saw’, not ‘read’), it took me a while to get this lovely novella. Part of the blame is on my library system, as it took several months before All Systems Red, by Martha Wells, was available, but mostly the blame lies with me. Although I have read some fantastic science fiction over the years, I am very cautious when it comes to this genre – perhaps because my older brother was a huge sci-fi nerd? (Certainly he […]

“Tea had featured heavily in the past fortnight. Miriam sometimes felt her belly sloshing with it, like a waterbed”

Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

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Scandal – a very British scandal, stiff upper lip, what will the neighbors say? I stumbled across Susie Steiner, the author of the DS Manon Bradshaw series, when I read of her death, July 2nd, in the Guardian (and, by the way, this is an enjoyable obituary, if an obituary can be said to be ‘enjoyable’! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jul/13/susie-steiner-obituary). Steiner was a former journalist who lived with retinitis pigmentosa and succumbed, at the very premature age of 51, to brain cancer. The obituary notes that Ms. Steiner […]



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