Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Finding happy little trees, mountains to climb and burglars to show who is the boss babe

The Swayze Year: You're Not Old, You're Just Getting Started! by Colleen AF Venable and Meghan Daly

by Leave a Comment

You are never too old to try something new, or to follow your passion. Even if that means you are in your 70s and you want to fly around the world. Even if that means you want to invent ramen noodles as we know them today. Even if you want to paint and are unhoused. Even if you want to write the classic dictionary or thesaurus.  Even if you are over the so-called, “Productive Years.” In The Swayze Year: You’re Not Old, You’re Just Getting […]

All of them

Beyond They/Them: 20 Influential Nonbinary and Gender-Diverse People You Should Know by Em Dickson and Cameron Mukwa

by Leave a Comment

Either the celebrities are getting younger, or I’m getting older (I’m assuming the former, as I’m certainly not getting older….).  Joking aside, the first few sections of Beyond They/Them: 20 Influential Nonbinary and Gender-Diverse People You Should Know focuses on young people born in the 1990s mostly, so I was a bit surprised how young the people were. Then again, we are just starting to have nonbinary and/or trans people in literature and/or mainstream, making the pioneers younger. And Em Dickson and Cameron Mukwa proudly […]

He thought his girlfriend kept him grounded, but he got a shock one night

Static Up All Night (volume 1) by Lamar Giles

by Leave a Comment

Static Up All Night (volume 1) by Lamar Giles and illustrated by Paris Alleyne is a nice teen superhero story.  Our main character, Virgil, is trying to balance a normal life and being a superhero. Set in the DC universe, we have mutant humans (mostly still looking human) that were created by a supposedly safe gas. Afterwards, those who made it were given some sort of powers (one girl hasn’t slept literally since it happened, so she has time to study, do multiple jobs, and […]

Can Travis master the Legendary Sword of Legends and fulfill his cosmic destiny? Without his parents learning he isn’t at fencing practice?

Travis Daventhorpe Powers Up! by Wes Molebash

by Leave a Comment

After a couple of more edgier titles, and a biography/memoir of Andy Warhol, I wanted something light to read. I found in my online reader copies Travis Daventhorpe Powers Up! by Wes Molebash. This is the second book in the series.  Since both volumes are currently available, I recommend reading them as closely together as possible, as there were several pieces I had forgotten about book one. Besides, it is fun to see how they pick up where we left off in book one. All the […]

Medieval Lady Pirate Cruising the Indian Ocean? Hot Damn.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Shakraborty

by 2 Comments

So I found a second new favorite genre this year.  The first is Mexican (actually Latin American) Gothic, and the second is now medieval Middle Eastern lady pirates.  One might think this is a narrow category, but there was The Stardust Thief, which I read a few books back.  This promises to be the first of a trilogy, and the author has a previous trilogy, The City of Brass, which is on its way from Powells even as we speak.  In other words, I am […]

I don’t know what the excitement is all about. It’s not like sharks attack people or anything….

I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916: A Graphix Book by Lauren Tarshis and adapted by Georgia Ball

by Leave a Comment

I set myself two goals this year. One was to read a book a day (it averages out to that, but I actually didn’t read a book every day), and the second was to do 12 Cannonballs. As of this review I have 26 books to go… We’ll see! So, one of the ways I was trying to read a book a day was to do simple books. Not books that were simplistic (See Jane. See Dick. See Dick and Jane), but easier reads, fun […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo