Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A lost world

The Horizon Volume Two by Jh and Abigail Blackman

The Horizon Volume Three by Jh and Abigail Blackman

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Honestly, I think The Horizon Volume Three contributed to some bad dreams I had after finishing it. I had finished volume two of The Horizon a few days before, and that probably did not help. I had forgotten some of volume one, but at the same time you almost didn’t need it as it was its own story, but if you want to know how The Boy and The Girl meet and a bit of the war and situation the children are facing you should. […]

Being a samurai isn’t easy

The Worst Ronin by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

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I’ve wanted to read The Worst Ronin since before it came out as I was seeing online reader copies. I did not actually get a copy until it was over a year old. With that said, it was worth the wait. I don’t think I would have appreciated the humor or elements before now. I recommend for ages at least 12 and up as there are several places where there is violence, injury, blood and other sensitive subjects.   Overall, it is the opposite of what […]

Literary fiction that I actually liked

Flashlight by Susan Choi

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The Book: It’s kind of hard to say what Flashlight is about. The summary makes it sound almost like a mystery: Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach, and hours later, she is found soaking wet and half-drowned, and he is nowhere to be found and presumed drowned. But most of the book is less concerned with this mystery than with the complicated family dynamics at play between the four main characters. Louisa’s father, Serk, is Korean, although he was born in […]

“Politics is like dice: the better the player, the worse the man”

Heartstone: A Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery by C.J. Sansom

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It’s 1545 and Henry VII has gotten England into a war with France; seeing as it’s Tudor-Era England, war with France, Spain, Scotland, or England itself is not really that surprising. It looks like the French will land their invasion force at Portsmouth. Too bad that Portsmouth is around the area Matthew Shardlake is being sent by his patron, Queen Catherine Parr. A servant in Parr’s former household has come to the Queen for assistance; the servant’s son has allegedly killed himself after swearing out […]

Shoulda Stuck to Cars

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin

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This was pretty amazing; I had never heard of this!  In 1927, when Henry Ford was one of the richest people in the world, he bought up over 5000 sq. miles of Amazonian jungle, near a river that fed into the Amazon, near its mouth on the Atlantic Ocean.  The purpose was to establish a rubber plantation; that being one of the raw ingredients that he needed for his autos that he couldn’t obtain domestically.  At the time, most of the world’s rubber production was […]

“But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all.”

Home by Marilynne Robinson

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Glory Boughton has returned to the small town of Gilead to take care of her dying father, the Reverend John Boughton. As the youngest of 8 children, she has spent her whole life trying to escape her role as the “baby” of the family and build a life outside of her childhood home. But as a failed engagement coincides with her father’s illness, Glory finds herself back in Gilead, wondering if it can ever truly be a home. Glory’s brother, Jack, is also back in […]



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