Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Curious Story Indeed

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

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“I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.” I’m not sure what I expected from this book, but to say I was pleasantly surprised is putting it mildly.  This book languished on my TBR for over a decade.  I don’t know why I avoided it, but I just never got around to picking it up.  I ended up listening […]

Dammit, Jerry!

Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation by Jim O'Heir

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Amy Poehler, Rashida, Jones, Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Aubrey Plaza, and Aziz Ansari. These are just a few of the stars of Parks and Recreation who didn’t bother talking to Jim O’Heir for this book. In both title and jacket copy, Welcome to Pawnee bills itself as a comprehensive, behind the scenes account of the beloved NBC sitcom, which ran for seven seasons and garnered a small but fervent fanbase. O’Heir was, of course, the actor behind sad-sack office punching bag Jerry Gergich. As a […]

Broken Towers

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

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First of all, I’m really happy to be back and looking forward to doing this this year! My reading outside of work has been abysmal lately, so I’ve decided to join Cannonball Read again to have more motivation. The one thing that worked last year, despite the general slacking off, were audiobooks, or better, one series of audiobooks: I’ve fallen into the Rivers of London series and the combination of Ben Aaronovitch’s writing and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s voice acting is just excellent. I’ve just finished the […]

Starting my 2025 reading year on a high note

Into the Woods by Jenny Holiday

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This was an ARC I won from the author in a Facebook contest (!) I know, right? My opinions are my own. Gretchen Miller is a self-proclaimed badass, and she’s not lying. After growing up with financial instability, food insecurities and a lot of general uncertainness due to her father’s unpredictability, she became determined never to have to depend on anyone ever again and started earning and saving her own money as a teenager, squirrelling it away for a future project. That project became a […]

A Few Twists, Some Predictable

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

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Best for: Fans of the genre. In a nutshell: Jane Finn has some important war-related documents. Unfortunately, she has been missing for years, and even though The Great War is over, those documents are important. However, through a few seemingly random interactions, friends Tommy and Tuppence end up trying to track Jane down. Worth quoting: N/A Why I chose it: I’ve been enjoying her books and plays, and so placed holds on whatever the library had, and this was the first to become available. Review: […]

“There’s something about realizing that the birds have been here all along, and all I have to do is learn to pay attention.”

Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb

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I was so excited when the new NPR’s Favorite Books List came out this year, and I immediately pored over it, surprised by how few books I knew. But one book immediately caught my eye. I sent the title to my husband who said it was written for a niche market of one (me!). The book was Birding with Benefits (2024) by Sarah T. Dubb, and it is a romance novel about birding. Some years ago now, I discovered that there were more birds in Colorado than just Mallards […]



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