Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Mission Be Funny While Stopping Duncan’s Murder

Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Weird Sisters by Olga Wojtas

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Bingo 3: Fanfic Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters is a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth; it’s definitely fanfic, both in that it’s a self-insertion into an established world/story and that it’s loaded with basically Easter Eggs that only a fan of the original would appreciate. The premise is that Shona McMonagle is a middle-aged librarian who is somehow capable of time-travel. The time travel thing is not really explained, and it doesn’t really matter as that’s not the point. When Shona was younger, she […]

My favourite book growing up

Ronja Rövardotter (Ronia the Robber's Daughter) by Astrid Lindgren

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CBR16 Sweet Books: Cozy (this was my absolutely most favourite book as a child) Nowhere Books Bingo: Has been adapted into a movie or a TV show CBR16 Bingo: Horses (the back cover has a picture of the horses that Ronja and Birk tame during their stay in the forest) Ronja is the only daughter of the chief of a robber band. She’s born during a particularly stormy night when a lightning strike creates a giant gorge in the stone fortress where she grows up. […]

This was disappointing

The Witches of Vardø by Anya Bergman

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In 1662, a former mistress of the king of Denmark-Norway (Norway was a Danish colony for about 400 years, for those not big into their history trivia), Anna Rhodius is sent into exile to a fortress in Vardø in the very north of Norway. She convinces herself that she has been sent there to help root out witchcraft, and if she does a good job, she will be welcomed back by the king with open arms. Zigri is the young widow of a fisherman, who […]

“Books were a dirty job, one of the black arts, along with witchcraft and printing.”

The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran

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This was a fascinating read! I can see why it comes so highly recommended by people whose opinions on books I trust. This is also a genremash book, with a little bit of lot of stuff thrown in, and done very well. We’ve got horror, fantasy (on the dark end), literary fiction, and a bit of a mystery plot as well. I will not be talking hugely about the plot, because watching it unfold is too fun to spoil, but this starts off about a […]

Yeah, definitely going to need a 2nd read

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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CBR16 BINGO: Part 2, for the second book in the Locked Tomb series I look back fondly on the days when, in my innocence, I thought Gideon the Ninth was a complicated novel. I read that book twice, thank goodness, because if I hadn’t, I would have either been even more confused by Harrow the Ninth, or I’d have shrugged off details that didn’t make sense thinking I was simply misremembering them. After finishing Harrow the Ninth, I am spent. I’m as weak and cowed […]

Gothic Vibes in a Waterlogged Setting

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

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To start with, this is one of the most accurate and well-chosen titles I have seen for a book. It’s relevant on multiple levels, from the literal to the psychological to, we eventually find out, the medical. This stood out to me more than book titles typically do. Our psychologically drowning main character is Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at a university that wouldn’t accept her to the literature college, which was where she wanted to be, because “women dumb” basically. This reflects […]



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