Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Week for Pop Culture Exploration of Fascist Themes

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

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My library reservation for Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping, the lastest book in her Hunger Games collection, finally came in two days after I finished watching the remarkable second season of Andor. I have really enjoyed and thought about Collins’ novels over the years, so I knew what I was getting into, but that was a weighty few days of pop culture consumption. Sunrise on the Reaping takes the reader back to the 50th Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell we first heard about in […]

Short book, a lot in it, trigger potential. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Lost Boy by Jay Martin

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Do not judge a book by its cover has usually been a good rule to follow for me. A lot of the time, a cover does not cover enough of the story for you to really understand the “down and dirty” or the “nitty gritty meaning of things” and reading past the cover of your book (and maybe especially with comics and graphic novels), is smart. However, with Lost Boy by Jay Martin (and an introduction by Shawn Mendes highly recommending Martin’s work) you could […]

Comfort grease, foie gras and Mexican porn

Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley

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Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley is a graphic novel that I almost did not review here. Partly because it is from 2013 and who wants to read a book that old? Well, I did, so I figured maybe someone else would, too. And it is not just for a fan of Knisley (though you probably should be a fan as they have a lot of fun relatable memoir stories) and it is not just for foodies, though that might help a […]

I was just saying I don’t do re-reads usually, but then I went and read this again.

Mage and the Endless Unknown by S.J. Miller

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In October 2023 I read Mage and the Endless Unknown by S.J. Miller. I thought I had read it before when I saw it on the (sadly) to be returned cart at work in May 2025. But I figured even if I had read it, I didn’t remember when and a second reading wouldn’t hurt. Fairly quickly I remembered a lot of it, but then there were places that I did not remember at all (I am looking at you the pretty-not-so-nice ghosts) and wondered […]

From Yehiel to Henri

The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man's Journey Across Wartime Europe by Uri Shulevitz

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Uri Shulevitz can spin a yarn.  And when it is based in/about real events they hit even harder. One of the last writings of Shulevitz, The Sky Was My Blanket: A Young Man’s Journey Across Wartime Europe (due in August 2025, read via an online reader copy), takes another true World War II story and brings it to life in emotional text.  This time, instead of following Uri’s story during the war, we follow one of his fathers younger brothers, Yehiel’s parallel journey during the […]

An Indie-Published YA Fantasy

A Discovery of Talents by Phoenix McDonald

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This is an indie-published book, which I was excited to read because I want to support indie authors. In this YA fantasy, 16-year-old Marcus discovers that he can travel from earth to another world, called Lysomnus. His father Deacon is kidnapped by someone from that world before he has much of an opportunity to tell Marcus more about this new ability or Lysomnus itself. Marcus sets out with his friends Leopold and Sadie to find his father, and along the way they are thrust into […]



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