Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I hate having emotions about real humans instead of fake ones, it just leads to stupid moments like this.”

Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries #4) by Martha Wells

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I have many grudges against the New York Times, dating back many years (even while acknowledging the amazing work its staffers can do), but I think the Times review of Exit Strategy almost perfectly describes who and what Murderbot is, “”a beautiful blend of exhausted cynicism and deep, helpless love”, because while Murderbot hates having feelings and would likely try to argue that it can’t love, it is the only explanation for the choices it makes throughout this book.   In Rogue Protocol Murderbot goes […]

Infinity War – But Even Better

Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone

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Earlier this year, I reviewed Dead Country, a newer installment in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence. Dead Country was an unusual entry in the series with its simpler parred back narrative and more personal focus— until we hit the end of course. That’s when a then-low lying series-spanning threat suddenly decided to make itself known. This leads us to Wicked Problems, which deals with the massive fallout. Tara had previously returned to Edgemont to deal with the aftermath of her father’s death, and while there, had […]

A charming and amusing romp that greatly entertained me, even though I couldn’t care less about birds, and actually sort of fear them

The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love by India Holton

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Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Only one bed (and horse) CBR16 Bingo: And also… (Repeat of the Bananas square, because this book fits the bill) Beth Pickering is the youngest professor of ornithology at Oxford, and she needs to really impress the faculty if she is to get tenure. She works with wealthy widow Hippolyta Quirm to try to locate and capture rare (and usually dangerous) birds. Just as they are about to capture the coveted deathwhistler, a rival ornithologist, the dashing young Professor Devon Lockley […]

“You made a severed finger into a feckin’ snow globe.” “It was almost Christmas,” she says with a shrug. “It felt … festive.”

Leather & Lark by Brynne Weaver

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3.5 stars CBR16 Bingo: Bananas   Lark Montague and Lachlan Kane have an unfortunate first meeting, when Lark during Halloween has had an “accident” and needs a car and a body fished out of a lake. Lachlan is the man forced by his employer to come help her do this. Lachlan is in scuba gear, Lark is heavily made up in a Halloween costume. Lachlan chooses to force Lark into the car of his trunk to transport her unseen away from the incident site, not […]

Let’s Go, Bananas

The Fish That Ate The Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen

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Read as part of CBR16  Bingo: bananas. The biography is on the life of Samuel Zemurray, the notorious “banana king” of United Fruit whose pursuit of wealth and product led to political destabilization in central America and the Caribbean.  It’s a shame that Samuel Zemurray has such an interesting story and yet only a so-so biographer. Rich Cohen takes on compelling subjects such as Zemurray and Albert Hicks (The Last Pirate of New York) but he tells their respective tales in such a slipshod and […]

Be fair to Jello

American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas, and Jell-O by Christina Ward

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I was so excited for this book. I like cookbooks and I like vintage books. American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Spam, Bananas, and Jell-O sounded so good. I think maybe I let my expectations get the better of me, because in the end I was a little disappointed. This book has pictures, which are really interesting and pretty, mostly of old cookbooks and recipes in said books. One problem is that the pictures either don’t match the words on the current […]



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