Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

by 2 Comments

Not a lot to say about this one. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t care for Espach’s other book, but she managed to hit the perfect combination of drama, comedy, and even hints of romance throughout the book. I really felt for the main character of Phoebe Stone who is still reeling after her husband left and divorced her two years earlier. Watching her slowly come awake due to the insanity of the wedding and all of the people she meets was very good. And […]

Not All That Mathy! Trust Me!

The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Math's Unsung Trailblazers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell

by 4 Comments

I got this for a Christmas present – retired math teacher and all – and it turned out to be quite enlightening.  These types of books tend to run more along the “Hey did you know that a lot of important math discoveries were made by – wait for it – women and non-European white males?  That includes the lady with the best nickname ever, the Witch of Agnesi, based on a botched translation.  My theory is that these ladies came up with these amazing […]

Historical fiction, time travel, romance, memoir, this book has it all.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

by 4 Comments

I finished this last week and couldn’t say immediately if I liked it or not but I have been thinking about it every day since then, and I think that’s really the tell. I picked this up without knowing anything about it, except that it was probably about time travel? Anyway, I was surprised on page 1 when I discovered that this is apparently about time travel and the Franklin expedition?? I’ve read The Terror and watched the miniseries, and generally feel familiar with and […]

Blessed are the dumbfucks

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

by 10 Comments

I first encountered this book about a decade ago. At the time, I was very Mormon and very anxious; I was aware of a lot of the problems in my lifelong faith, but terrified to face them head-on. Lamb was in the Librarian’s Choice display at the local library, and the cover art reminded me a little bit of the Discworld books, so I picked it up. As I skimmed, I was equally intrigued and horrified. A fictional book about Jesus? A comedic book about Jesus? With swears […]

What kind of pastry are you?

The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

by 3 Comments

It’s cold outside my friends. Let’s snuggle up under the covers with a cup of something warm and this lovely cozy fantasy. I think I’d be a simple chocolate brownie, super sweet and delightfully squishy. Tao is a traveling fortune teller, drifting from village to village in a wagon pulled by her trusty mule Laohu. It’s a solitary life made less lonely when a small fortune causes a former thief and an ex-mercenary to join her in her travels as they search for a lost […]

So good, so far

So Far So Good by Ursula K LeGuin

by 4 Comments

I’ve never really gotten poetry or Ursula K LeGuin. I have nothing against either, they just weren’t for me… until So Far So Good, LeGuin’s last work. I knew signing up for a reading challenge would take me outside of my reading comfort zone, which is fine. Outside of my comfort zone is rarely uncomfortable (with reading). The worst is usually just uninteresting, the best is a bigger comfort zone. The challenge (storygraph’s 2025 genre challenge) was a nature poetry collection and I have enough […]



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