Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Bend this.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Toph Beifong’s Metalbending by Faith Erin Hicks

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I admit it, Toph in the Avatar the Last Airbender series was never my favorite character. I appreciated her and sometimes even her “Devil-may-care” attitude, but her humor (she said it as it is about a good toenail picking) was usually spot on. But I do not think she and I would have been “real life” friends. Therefore, when I saw that she was getting her own book, I was not sure I wanted to read it. However, I am up for almost anything ALA […]

Dude, where is my lightning bolt?

Percy Jackson and the Olympians the Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel by Robert Venditti

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The graphic novel adaptations of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians the Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel seems to rely on you having read the full novels. In fact, most of the graphic novel adaptations feel this way. However, you can still follow the action, but sometimes things fell assumed or feel missing. They are good books, but not great in my opinion. I will still read him, as I like the comfort of the reading level and the story itself, but I will […]

Fighting For the Right For Women To Compete

Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women’s Olympic Team by Elise Hooper

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Best for: Anyone interested in how women have had to fight against sexism, misogyny, and racism to do simple things like run really fast. In a nutshell: Three women’s stories are told starting in the late 1920s through to the 1936 Berlin Olympic. Worth quoting: “Getting a taste of what it felt like to be good at something and then having it taken away still left her feeling crushed when she allowed herself to think about it.” “Rules could be broken. Judges could be wrong. […]

High fives all around!

A High Five For Glenn Burke by Phil Bildner

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Sixth grader Silas Wade adores baseball, and it adores him. Center fielder for his middle-school league and the heart of the team, Silas loves to boost morale with good-natured pranks, spreading love of The Sandlot (aka the greatest movie of all time), but most importantly winning games.  For his middle school biography project, Silas turns to baseball too, and knocks it out of the park with a presentation on Glenn Burke, five-tool talent of the L.A. Dodgers in the 1970s, who not only killed it […]

Rugby stories I couldn’t put down

What a Flanker by James Haskell

Loose Head by Joe Marler

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I’m an armchair rugby fan, and have been for nearly 30 years, but its only in the last few that I’ve read some autobiographies of coaches and players.  The two books I’ve just read back to back are by two England players, one former and one current, and were both so good that I read each one in one sitting. The first, What a Flanker, was written by the retired James Haskell.  I’m going to openly admit that I had bought into the public image […]

Earning Pink

The Knockout by Sajni Patel

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I feel slightly disadvantaged reviewing Sajni Patel’s, The Knockout – I’m not Indian American, I know nothing about Muay Thai, and I haven’t been a teenager in a long, long time. That said, I enjoyed The Knockout. I’ve had it sitting in my NetGalley queue for months because it was suppose to come out last year, but the pandemic pushed it back. I received this as an advance reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Once I started reading I realized that […]



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