Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Great premise but a bit underwhelming

Incantation by Alice Hoffman

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Incantation by Alice Hoffman is a work of historical fiction set during the Spanish Inquisition. Narrated by 16-year-old Estrella deMadrigal, this YA novel imagines how a family of good standing in small village gets swept up in the persecution of conversos, that is, Jews who had converted to Christianity but were later accused of secretly still practicing Judaism. Estrella will discover secrets about her family and have her eyes opened to the true nature of her neighbors and her best friend. The novel opens with […]

“But she turned her floodlight eyes on me and demanded a confession”

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

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  Do you like books with smart, bad-ass ladies both fictional and historical? Do you like intelligent novelizations of real historical events? If so, The Alice Network is definitely a book you should add to your TBR pile. The book follows two timelines. In 1915 a young Eve Gardiner is recruited to work as a spy in Nazi-occupied France for the titular Alice Network. Eve’s experiences in France leave both emotional and physical scars. In 1947, Charlie St. Clair a pregnant and unwed American socialite […]

The results of raiding the library where I now work

Bedtime is Canceled by Cece Meng

Help! We Need a Title! by Hervé Tullet

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I work in the Youth Services department of a library now, so I can totally take out picture books for “work” and no one thinks twice about it!  It’s actually my job now! So I’ve been going through my TBR list for picture books and seeing what they’re all about. I probably won’t actually use either of these for work, not because they aren’t good, but because aren’t suited for my ages for storytime.    Bedtime is Canceled By Cece Meng, Illustrated by Aurélie Neyret […]

Cheating shmeating! In the mid-19th century, Harvard really knew how to rock a scandal.

Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard by Paul Collins

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Ooh, I do love a good period true crime drama. From Erik Larson’s much-lauded Devil in the White City, to Kate Summerscale’s lesser-known The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, to Bruce Chadwick’s I Am Murdered (which I reviewed all the way back for CBR5),  you take a  murder that’s at least a century old, add some period costumes, a few blue collar witnesses pitted against high-brow lawyers, and a lot of research, mix well, and you have a perfect cocktail of historical entertainment. I especially enjoy reading […]

Some Things Happen To The X-Men?! Really?!

X-Men Gold - Evil Empire (Volume 2) by Marc Guggenheim

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A rather thankless collection of short stories, biding their time until it gets to a more interesting section of the X-Men’s timeline. Some important things happen but nothing that is commensurate with the $18 list price. We get introduced to the new X-Cutioner but without any explanation of how he got his gear or his martial arts skill, just his beef. He successfully lays out our heroes until he doesn’t, which is par for the course. Kitty Pride is now a ninja so yay! Glad […]

I felt like I could see the wizard behind the curtain, pulling the strings

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

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 On a visit to London last year, I stopped by Foyle’s on Charing Cross Road a few times, and on one of those visits, I picked up three space opera books: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley, and Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. The cashier’s face lit up when he saw my choices, saying that he’d read and loved all of them, especially Ancillary Justice. I’m not sure why it’s the last of […]



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