Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Warm Hug of a Book

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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I have heard people talk about cozy books feeling like “warm hugs,” and until now I didn’t understand what that meant. I wasn’t even sure I had the same definition of “cozy” as everyone else. But now I understand what that means and how a book can be cozy without being low stakes. This novel was so wholesome and all around delightful, a perfect blend of cozy and adventurous. Tress lives on the Rock in an ocean made of green spores. No one is allowed […]

Dipping My Toe Into Sanderson’s Oeuvre

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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Tress is a lower-class girl on Diggen’s Point, a tiny rock that barely qualifies as an island, but whose industry – salt mining – is too vitally important to the kingdom’s safety to allow anyone to immigrate elsewhere. Salt, in fact, is one of the few things (alongside silver) that keep people safe from the spores that fall from the moons and make up the seas that cover the world. Tress is a window washer, a collector of cups from faraway places, an adept bargainer, […]

Finally Reading This…

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

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I am a huge fan of epic fantasy, especially long, sprawling, multi-book series, and have been since childhood, so it’s a little surprising that it’s taken me so long to read anything by Brandon Sanderson (he’s been on my TBR for over 10 years). Honestly, I think the thing that finally pushed me to read one was that a trade paperback edition was released last year (I’d previously only seen it in mass market, which I hate reading, especially for longer books — I feel […]

“That’s all in the name of good drama. The past is boring anyway.”

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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Tress of the Emerald Sea is set in a fantasy world that has pirates and trade routes in the oceans, but there aren’t oceans. They are instead spores, and if these spores come into contact with water, they explode in different ways. Most of these ways will kill you. Tress, the main character, loves collecting cups and talking to her friend Charlie. Then she realizes he may be more than a friend, at which point Charlie is sent off to find a bride. Tress embarks […]

perhaps this will be the year of expanded worlds both IRL and fictional (yes, I mean maybe I’ll finally get around to the Cosmere)

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

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Was just speaking to my friend (and soon to be author!!!) about Sanderson–I’ve given her a copy of The Final Empire, knowing that I myself took ages (and two reads) to actually read it. Despite the fact that I’m a casual Cosmere reader at best (as in, I’ve only read the Mistborn books + the various secret projects #1-3), there was so much I could say to recommend him to her. Do you want an author who’s learned and grown over time, becoming more progressive and […]

a thousand apologies and what feels like a thousand reviews (through November 2023)

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Kindred by Octavia E Butler

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hinumegin er mars by Sólrun Michelsen

Trust by Hernan Diaz

How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't by Ian Dunt

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It by Owen Jones

In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomás González

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The City & the City by China Miéville

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin

Passion Simple by Annie Ernaux

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers

The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon

A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas

Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within by Rory Stewart

Rivals by Katherine McGee

Reign by Katherine McGee

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

The Iliad by Homer, Emily Wilson

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

10 Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy

A Little Life by Hanya Yanighara

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

The Starting Over Game by girl_with_kaleidoscope_eyes

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Edinburg by Alexander Chee CBR15: Sex True fact, when someone British asked me what I was reading I pronounced this “Edin-BERG” and to their credit they didn’t laugh but instead asked, with some horrified sincerity, if that’s how Americans say it. It’s not! At least, not on purpose. It’s just how can the English language claim to have been invented in a country that seems to not have grasped even a shred of understanding of how the various letters in it work? I digress. This is […]



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