Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Gals being literary rivals, then pals, then more?

Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti

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Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Lady Georgiana Cleeve was disowned by her father when she announced that she was the author of several popular novels, and has lived alone with her mother ever since, cut off from all contact with her brothers, convinced that the scandal she brought on herself and her family would irrevocably tarnish the reputations of anyone connected to her. She is selling well and her books are popular, but for […]

Do you think I read a lot?

Clara the Triumphant Rhinoceros: A True Story by Jane Kurtz

Woody's Words : Woodrow Wilson Rawls and Where the Red Fern Grows by Lisa Rogers

Woods & Words: The Story of Poet Mary Oliver. by Sara Holly Ackerman

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Biographies are a fun genre.  You can find out fun facts about favorite authors, poets or even rhinoceroses. Yes, rhinoceroses can have a biography, too. After all, it is hard for them to hold a pencil in their hoof for them to write an autobiography. Therefore, I will start off with Clara the Triumphant Rhinoceros: A True Story (in case you doubt me that this is a biography of a rhino, there is “true story” in the title). Jane Kurtz created a story that gives […]

Charles Addams, Shel Silverstein, AA Milne and Edward Gorey had a baby this would be its cousin.

The Boy Who Lived in a Shell: Snippets for Wandering Minds by John Himmelman

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If Charles Addams, Shel Silverstein, AA Milne and Edward Gorey had a baby this would be its cousin. The Boy Who Lived in a Shell: Snippets for Wandering Minds by John Himmelman is not necessarily spooky or kooky like Addams or Gorey; or rhyming like Silverstein and does not have the sweetness or innocence of Milne, but a mixture that is all its own. Due mid-March 2025, I read via an online reader’s copy. The stories the boy talks about, or actually writes, are on […]

Ducking ducks and Women in Pants!

Mr. McCloskey’s Marvelous Mallards: The Making of Make Way for Ducklings by Emma Bland Smith

Cloaked in Courage: Uncovering Deborah Sampson, Patriot Soldier by Beth Anderson

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This tale by Emma Bland Smith is the one that imagines how things went when Robert McCloskey decided to write Make Way For Ducklings. Their take is a bit poetic license I am sure, however Mr. McCloskey’s Marvelous Mallards: The Making of Make Way for Ducklings, is a fun way to see how one of his most famous works was made. From real ducklings to full grown ducks; from editors not willing to take the “okay” and from his own need to have things perfect, […]

Elementary, my dear reader

Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock (Who Wrote Classics)  by Linda Bailey

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Ages ago I found an online reader link to a book. It looked interesting, but not one I wanted to read right away. I put it in my saved links and forgot about it, until one day I was going through those saved links and found Arthur Who Wrote Sherlock (Who Wrote Classics) by Linda Bailey again. It is a clever telling of the life and times of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The narrator tells us this story as if the two of us (narrator […]

Life imitates art, which is inspired by quiet village life

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson

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15-word review: Anonymous spinster Barbara Buncle writes a book to pay the bills, her entire village rages. This witty novel, originally published in 1934, features rather plain and unassuming village spinster Barbara Buncle falling on hard times and writing a novel to make enough money to be able to pay her bills. She briefly considered keeping chickens but doesn’t like birds. As Miss Buncle hasn’t really been anywhere or experienced much outside village life, she uses her own neighbours and the village of Copperfield where […]



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