Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

No more

The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

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CBR17Bingo: “Arts” because this book has a heavy emphasis on sculpture and painting. I am usually very good about writing my reviews in the order that I read the books, but Seven Sisters (2015) by Lucinda Riley somehow slipped through the cracks. Maybe I just didn’t want to think about this book anymore. Seven Sisters is the first book in a series of eight, and it was chosen recently for my book club. I dutifully downloaded the audiobook and began listening to the over eighteen hours of narrative. This […]

“Why should you love him whom the world hates so? Because he love me more than all the world.”

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt

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It’s great reading a book where you’re not 100% sure what the author thought of his subject; it makes you not 100% what you think of the book. As you can’t tell from the title, Dark Renaissance is about Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare contemporary who had a brilliant albeit brief career, dying at the age of 29 during an alleged brawl over a bill. There is not a whole lot of information about Marlowe available (even the possible sole portrait of Marlowe has not been actually […]

PUUUUNK!

Be Your Own Backing Band by Liz Prince

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The author, Liz Prince, has become a reading staple of late. I have read most (if not all) that is  out there (minus a few things she just illustrated). But when I got Be Your Own Backing Band, I felt that Prince might have had one of her best collections yet. But then again, she could probably write a phone book and I would read it. After I finished, I said, “Keep on coming with the cool and goodness!” This is a look at how […]

From dump to park

Once a Wasteland: From Toxic Dump to National Park by Diane Muldrow and Amy Jindra Hodgson

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Starting off almost poetically, Once a Wasteland: From Toxic Dump to National Park moves into the facts quickly. Everything is laid out in simple, but not simplistic terms. The overall tone is good, it allows you to access a piece of history and the extras allow the book to grow with the reader. However, “points” are lost due to the fact environmental stories are not new, it was not necessarily told in a new manner and I had questions that were not answered, such as […]

Of course, after building up this title, you will need to wait until April 2026 for reading

Unbreakable: A Japanese American Family in an American Incarceration Camp (A Picture Book) by Minoru Tonai, Jolene Gutiérrez, and Chris Sasaki

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When you read as many picture books as I do, once in a while one of two things (or both) can happen. The first is you think you’ve read it before (or at least a sample) or things start to feel similar due to similar subjects. A subject I am interested in are the Japanese-American internment camps from World War II.  This is partly because I have family who is Japanese-American and when I realized this could be them it made it personal (I know […]

What can a potato do?

Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa: Join the Quest with Peru's Famed Scientist and Potato Expert by Sara Andrea Fajardo and Juana Martinez-Neal

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As with several books I was not going to read, Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa: Join the Quest with Peru’s Famed Scientist and Potato Expert by Sara Andrea Fajardo and Juana Martinez-Neal (illustrator) was one of them, but it eventually found its way to my TBR pile as it was on a Best of 2025 Picture Book list. This was the final sign that told me I probably should read it. I was still nervous as when a book gets that hyped […]



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