Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About kittenkong42

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SF and fantasy fiction fan. Lost my dad and sister to cancer so want to support this cause

kittenkong42's Reviews:

A bit of a Carry On…

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

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The premise of this book intrigued me with it being a full story set in a pseudo-Harry Potter world dreamed up to be a novel series in another book (Fangirl) whose protagonist wrote fan fiction. So it’s a fictionalisation of a book series that was Harry Potter with the numbers filed off. And our lead characters here are Harry & Draco archetypes (called Simon and Baz) with the idea being that in the Fangirl-verse everyone wanted them to be in a relationship rather than enemies. […]

Anxiety and prejudice in Space

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kawal

The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kawal

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These two books by Mary Robinette Kawal are a prequel to her earlier short story The Lady Astronaut of Mars and tell the story of the accelerated human exploration of space triggered by a catastrophic event. Our protagonist is Dr Elma York a young(ish) woman who is a mathematical prodigy and qualified pilot – having flown with the WASPs during the WW2. In these books we follow her journey through the 1950s to the 1960s dealing with a world in crisis, prejudice, and her own […]

Kingdom Hearts: Don’t Chase the Dream

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance by Tomoco Kanemaki

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Another light novel adaptation in the increasingly convoluted Kingdom Hearts series! It will always amuse me that there are technically 3 main games in this series, but if that’s all you played / read then you will be very confused as all of the offshoots are relevant to the plot. This is a novelisation of a game that first appeared on the Nintendo 3DS – which is the entire reason for the name – and which has subsequently appeared on PS4 and Xbox. Story-wise this […]

In which I review Howl’s Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

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Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is one of those books I read as a grown-up and wished I had discovered as a child. It stuck with me enough that when I saw that the Folio Society had produced a copy I needed to get it, and whilst I missed the first print (nobody took the Christmas present hinting I did…) I managed to get it on the reprint and so had a re-read of it this year. A lot of people will come […]

The art of saying “NO”

F**k No!: How to stop saying yes, when you can't, you shouldn't, or you just don't want to by Sarah Knight

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A change of pace for me with a non-fiction, self-help book. This is a new book from the author of “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k” and is aimed at helping people understand the value of saying “No” in both a personal and professional setting. I wanted to give this a read because weirdly I was just in the process of writing a LinkedIn article about the value of learning to say “No” to things at work so it was interesting to see […]

Another childhood book appropriate for the season

Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome

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This is another book in my partial re-read of the Swallows & Amazons series by Arthur Ransome and one that I hadn’t read since I was a child. Because this book is set during the winter and it’s January it seemed like a good time to pick this one up. There are times I like to read something that evokes memories and for me this represents winters in childhood when you could play in the snow and have fun. I may not have had the […]



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