Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Found Family with Spies, Killers, and Secrets but It’s Cozy

Spy X Family Family Portrait by Aya Yajima, Tatsuya Endo

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For some reason I really needed a cozy read not long ago; I’m part way through something that sounded like it should have but is turning out to not be that. I put down book #1, and went for option 2: manga. Or to be more precise, a series of short stories based on the manga (and also now anime) Spy X Family titled Spy X Family: Family Portrait. If you know the series it helps but it’s not totally mandatory as there is a […]

“Don’t stop beginning. Begin and begin and begin. Begin endlessly—that is, without the taint of even eventual ending.”

All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld

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Literary critic Becca Rothfeld argues against the modern inclination toward minimalism, and insteads advocates embracing all the messy and irrepressible things that make the human existence so rewarding. I am this book’s target audience, because like Rothfeld I wonder if in the process of streamlining our world we have reached an unpleasantly bland and bloodless zeitgeist. I enjoy colorful and unusual clothes and furniture. I find the aesthetic of minimalism boring. I love the over the top pulp literature of yesteryears. I don’t want the […]

She looked as good as air conditioning.

Give it to Me! by Angelina M. Lopez

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In Give it to Me: Sexy Tales About Women Getting the Good Loving, Lopez gives us a collection that shows her range as a story teller. From the jet-setting billionaire and her wine making prince to a woman who has gone back to school looking for some precious alone time in the library stacks, Lopez is writing about women getting what they want. The first and last stories, “The Phone Call” and “Star 69,” are a part one and part two. “The Phone Call” is […]

A Much-Wanted Dialectic

The Unwanted Guest by Tamsyn Muir

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Hah, Ok I thought maybe doing this short story was a little bit cheeky.  But then I saw that fellow Cannonballer Monty had beaten me to the punch! All the permission I needed. In physical sense, The Unwanted Guest was initially a little tricky for me to track down and read because I have so far only seen it in the paperback copies of Nona the Ninth. I wasn’t going to buy a paperback version, as I have already purchased two copies of the book […]

Fairy tale villains and loving sisters

Into the Goblin Market by Vikki VanSickle

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Recently I located a list of books that were recommended by other booksellers across the country. I found the picture book section and said, “Online reading here I come.” And I was able to read most of them (I have one in physical form so I passed and I have two more to read), but one that really stuck out to me was Into the Goblin Market by Vikki VanSickle and Jensine Eckwall as the illustrator.  It is a contemporary folktale or fairy tale that […]

Ironheart: the other metal superhero

Marvel-Verse: Ironheart by Eve L. Ewing and various

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Another book in the Marvel-Verse graphic novel series I found is Marvel-Verse: Ironheart by Eve L. Ewing, Brian Michael Bendis, Kevin Libranda, Luciano Vecchio, Marco Rudy, Nico Leon and a few others. I hadn’t planned on writing another Marvel review (even though I have read two of the baddies,  Marvel-Verse: Kang and Marvel-Verse: Kraven the Hunter, plus two of the Guardians of the Galaxy comics: Marvel-Verse: Rocket & Groot and Marvel-Verse: Guardians of the Galaxy. But honestly, I was not as impressed with them as I had […]



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