Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About MamaOrca

CBR17 Participant

Longtime reader of cannonball reviews in PajibaLove, first time joiner

MamaOrca's Reviews:

Go read Melissa while your library still carries it

Melissa by Alex Gino

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On November 7, 2024, I binge-ordered a bunch of books from banned lists – not sure why I remember the date of that order so clearly….  Anyway, my hope was to collect books that I wanted to be sure my daughter has access to, and since I haven’t read many of them myself, I’m planning to alternate them between my usual mysteries, fantasy, and sci-fi.  Melissa is the first book from our new banned book collection that I’ve read. Melissa is geared toward middle-grade kids […]

Maybe read the synopsis before starting a new book

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

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I bought The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco at a used book store years ago solely based on the author.  I loved Foucault’s Pendulum and The Name of the Rose when I read them in college and the title sounded fun.  Reader, it was not fun.  (I also purchased another of his novels at the same time, The Prague Cemetery, and started it just before this book.  I read one chapter, was horrified and switched to this book.  One of five books […]

A lovely, much-needed escape

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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When I began this book, I was not sold on the first few chapters.  The style was a little too – overly smarmy asides, self-satisfied attempts at humor – I was annoyed by the cliched characters and benign but still smug silliness.  And then my hometown, Los Angeles, caught fire, and my family evacuated early one morning, and my entire feeling toward it changed. I read this book over three days while waiting for my phone to tell me which of my friends had lost […]



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