Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

We will present our findings together. I will impress my sponsor. You will make a name for yourself and set the scientific community clamouring for your book, which I understand is out next year.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

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Recently, the way I use audiobooks has changed. I most often listen to books I’ve already read in print, rather than my previous habit of listening to long sci-fi and fantasy, or non-fiction books. I blame the pandemic, which has permanently changed my brain (I miss tv shows and movies, but my brain won’t go there). Regardless, I acquired the audiobook version of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries and listened while I baked batches of cookies and loaves of bread. No apple cakes or pies, though. […]

Bubble bubble toil and trouble

The Witching Year by Diana Helmuth

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As is common, I had a witch phase when I was a teen. Or perhaps even a pre-teen! I had an alter. I cast circles. Earnestly called the corners. Bound people from doing harm. I watched my bootleg recording of the Craft so much I could deliver each line from memory. Being a witch was a thrilling secret, which came undone the second my sister gifted me a book of spells for my birthday. Suddenly, I felt like a fool. I cannot really explain why, […]

“And it so angered me that I finally thought to myself, ‘Bitch, do something yourself instead of just sitting there getting angry. Do something.'”

Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower

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What a fascinating life this woman led. I really feel like it would be pretty hard to come away from this book not liking Elizabeth Taylor as a human being. She loved fiercely, struggled publicly, and left a huge legacy that has helped millions of people, and continues to do so. I grew up in the 80s and 90s knowing who Elizabeth Taylor was, just like everyone else, because she was part of the zeitgeist, one of the most famous women ever to live. I […]

The Knights of the Round Table vs. Climate Change

Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee

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Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. The realm is in peril, and the knights of the round table have been called back to duty once again, waking up from under the earth to fight . . . climate change. Among other things. Here’s a little bit of the blurb: “An immortal Knight of the Round Table faces his greatest challenge yet—saving the politically polarized, rapidly warming world from itself—in this slyly funny contemporary take […]

Whoops, read this back in CBR7 and never continued!

Shards of Honor (Vorkosigan #1) by Lois McMaster Bujold

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So I read this book back in CBR7 with the full intention of blasting through the series . . . and then proceeded to not do that. So of course I had to re-read before actually continuing. This is still three and a half stars, but I’m bumping it up this go-round. I’m very glad I re-read this, because I knew I had forgotten most of what happened here, except for the general arc of Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan, but I didn’t realize HOW much […]

Pioneer Woman

Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson

The Paper Daughters of Chinatown by Heather B. Moore

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Frontier Grit – 3.5 stars In this book we meet twelve women who traversed the American frontier in search of their dreams, though what these dreams were and the paths they took to them vary extraordinarily. As a child I devoured Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. Though I’ve have quite a lot of bubbles burst about her depiction of her childhood (check out Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires to learn more), my interest in those so-called pioneers who tried to ‘tame’ the Wild West still persists, […]



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