Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

1880s romance and human rights

Renegade Girls by Nora Neus and Julie Robine

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When I started the Nora Neus and Julie Robine graphic novel, Renegade Girls, I was not enjoying it. Things felt too simple, romanticized, not original and terribly slow paced. I already knew the ending. Or so I thought. Granted, there was the obvious ending (if you are paying attention) but things did not take the obvious path to get there. We have a realistic look at the troubles of the factor workers and we see the ugly but it is not gratuitous. In fact, if […]

It’s the end for Haru

Haru Book 3: Fall by Joe Latham

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In volume three of this series, Haru Book 3: Fall, our hero Haru must follow one of the last troupes of mythology and the journey of the hero. Haru is a non-binary blue-colored bird (with a younger sibling, a pig best friend, and a ghost robin mother) that has in volumes one (Spring) and two (Summer), traveled and fought the evil of the land, but in three we must take the trip to the Afterlife to be reborn. Joe Latham’s characters continue the journey started […]

When was the last time your clothes made you smile?

Clothes to Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams by Eric Darnell Pritchard and Shannon Wright

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Two things are happening to let us know that time moves on. First, we are starting to get 2026 calendars in (and already have the August 2025-June 2026 planners) at my work, and second, 2026 reader copies are becoming available so we are ready for next year (and here we’re not even halfway through 2025!). But one of those readers (that I found online) which is due mid-January 2026 was Clothes to Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams by Eric Darnell Pritchard and […]

Friends since the 1940s

Are You a Friend of Dorothy?: The True Story of an Imaginary Woman and the Real People She Helped by Kyle Lukoff

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Are You a Friend of Dorothy?: The True Story of an Imaginary Woman and the Real People She Helped is by Kyle Lukoff and illustrated by Levi Hastings. I had hoped that it would be something different than the usual LGBTQ book, as I have read several and wanted more things. The fact that Lukoff is using the code phrase, “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” made it seem promising. And while they did not disappoint, as an adult reader, I’m still looking for more. […]

Baseball Like You’ve Never Seen It

Fifty-Nine in "84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had by Edward Achorn

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If you’re a baseball fan who also happened to be on Twitter in the pre-Elon days, the name Old Hoss Radbourn will probably be familiar to you via the brilliant parody twitter account pretending to be the great pitcher of old, humorously carping about the national pastime and how much easier contemporary players had it. The Old Hoss was, in fact, a real ballplayer named Charles Radbourn (or Radbourne, depending on the source.) He’s in the Hall of Fame, having won over three hundred games […]

Gettin’ some lovin’

Young Men in Love: New Romance by Various

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Young Men in Love: New Romance by Anthony Oliveira, Joe Glass, Matt Miner (these two are highlighted as they are the ones in the email that included an online reader link), Luciano Vecchio, Bradley Clayton, Ilias Kyriazis, David Brame, Josh Cornillon and various others, came to me via an email from A Wave Blue World and Diamond Book Distributors. The email itself (which I assume was sent via a mailing list) was from Jesse who has sent other emails for the books they rep. And […]



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