Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Excellent indeed

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

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There is a Cannonballer out there, whose name I cannot remember, who is a big Barbara Pym fan. Perhaps it’s multiple Cannonballers? Not sure. Anyway, Pym’s name has come up many times over the Cannonballs, and a few weeks ago, I found Excellent Women for $2 at a bookstore’s going out of business sale. While that is sad news (especially as it’s the closest bookstore to my home), the $2 turns out to have been the best investment I’ve made in a long time. This […]

Innocence vs. experience and everything in between

Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

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Poetry lovers, or really anyone who has taken an introduction to English literature class, will recognize the title of this Tracy Chevalier novel as a line from the William Blake poem “The Tyger”: Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? “The Tyger” is probably the most famous poem in Blake’s classic poetry collection Songs of Innocence and Experience, first printed by Blake himself in 1789. In Burning Bright, Chevalier borrows heavily from […]

Rainbow Rowell may have ruined me, but I’m not mad

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

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Last year was really the first time I read any YA books as an adult, aside from the first Harry Potter book my dad bought me for Christmas twenty years ago. Maybe I’ve just had a string of bad luck. Maybe I’m too much of a literary fiction snob (GAC) to get the same kind of enjoyment out of YA. Or maybe Rainbow Rowell, and to a lesser degree, Becky Albertalli, spoiled me for everyone else since their books resonated so deeply with me. I […]

A boy and a penguin

Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers

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All of us are lonely and unsure in friendships and relationships, but still friendships happen in their own weird, imperfect ways. Such is the tale of Lost and Found. A boy discovers a penguin and the penguin is sad. The boy wants to make the penguin happy, but no matter what he does the penguin is sad. The boy then decides that the penguin is homesick and they set out together on a perilous journey to get to the south pole. There, the boy leaves […]

“Animals were hiding behind the rock, except the little fish”

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

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  Well this review is going to be a tough one. I’m not totally sure how to describe this book or what genre to even put it in. The basic story goes like this: Eric Sanderson has acute memory loss spurred on by the sudden death of his lover Clio while they were vacationing in the Greek Islands. He literally has no memories before the start of the book in which he wakes up on the floor of a strange house. He begins receiving letters […]

Books about books

Otto the Book Bear by Katie Cleminson

A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston

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A Child of Books By Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston   This isn’t just a picture book.  It’s a work of art! There is so much packed into these few pages.  The story is simple. A child of books (real or imagined, we don’t quite know, and it doesn’t really matter) is introducing a boy to her world.  I could definitely see this being made into a short film, but the problem with that would be people constantly pausing to read what was on the […]



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