Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Liked it! Wish it was longer.

She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women by Jennifer Wright

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This is a slight little book about murderers, warriors, cult leaders, and psychopaths. Who also happen to be ladies! I wish I could have given it an enthusiastic five stars, but because of the format, I don’t think that would ever have happened. This is a book so chock full of murderous women they all start to run together. The chapters are very short, and especially if you read or listen to them within a short period of time like I did, none of it […]

“‘That man’s lying.’ With that, he opened his suitcase and took out a blank telegram. After a few moments, he began to write. KATSUKO DEAD. SEND KINDAICHI.”

The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) by Seishi Yokomizo

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A clever, meta little Japanese murder mystery, first published in 1946, by a man who was apparently a huge fan of the western Golden Age mystery. This is the first book in the Kosuke Kindaichi series that he wrote dozens of novels for. Kindaichi-san is very unlike his British counterparts, Poirot, Wimsey, or even Marple. He’s very young, and a bit of a slob, but he has a mind for mysteries. Here, he is brought to the scene of a wedding where the bride and […]

Henry James would not have understood what a smart house is.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

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I read the first third of this in my paperback copy, then switched over to the audio to see if I could jump start my interest in it again. It worked! For a while, at least. It helped me get through the book, anyway. I liked the audio version better. I was super into this book at first, but as soon as the main character reached the house in the country, something about it lost me. It probably also didn’t help that I was traveling […]

“I could not prevent what was done to me, nor can I change what people made of me. But I know what I am and have decided to continue being what I am.”

Dragon Keeper (The Rain Wild Chronicles, #1) by Robin Hobb

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This is the fourth series overall set in Robin Hobb’s Elderlings world, and the second that takes place in the Rain Wilds, with the liveships and dragons, after The Liveship Traders. I continue to be very, very glad I gave her another chance as an author. I loved revisiting this world and seeing characters from Liveship again, but here we get an all-new set of characters to follow for four books, including a dragon POV! Please do not read further if you haven’t read The […]

I have only just now noticed the snake on the cover of this book. Which is extremely foreboding if you’ve read the book!

Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

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This one is going to be tough for me to review because I did like the book, and it was very well-written, and the audio narration was well-performed (by the author herself!), but I didn’t feel that sense of resolution I normally feel after finishing a good book. On a conscious level, I wanted things from this book that it didn’t seem interested in providing, so there was always going to be a clash there (more on this below), but also, there’s just something I […]

“You can’t discover what’s true based on how many people think it’s true.”

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen

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I’m not going to let this excellent book be the one that let me get behind in reviews in 2022. I’ve been too intimidated to start writing this review because the book was so smart, so I sat down just now and decided I was going to type until a review came out. So that’s what’s happening here. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is just as cheeky as its title would imply. The book is (darkly) funny, and the story of Katharina Kepler […]



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