Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Everything changes in a Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

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Sometimes the weight of expectation is enough to keep me from reading a book I truly want to read. Case in point: I’ve had NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season on my shelf for almost a year, even though I was sooo excited when I bought my copy. The timing was right, though, since I needed a win after a bit of a streak of so-so reads, and for the most part, this book delivered. The Fifth Season begins with a prologue that introduces the world […]

“The things that could have happened but did not are just as crucial to a life as all the things that do.”

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

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This is the second book by Karen Thompson Walker (the first being The Age of Miracles), whereupon finishing the book, I was unsure how I felt and needed to sit with the story for a while. With TAOM, there was a lot to like — interesting premise, selfish tween narrator, fascinating vignettes of the day to day life that we take advantage of — but I always felt that maybe the book was a bit too much like “literary fiction” to be believed as the […]

I so wanted to love this. Alas, it was not to be.

99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne

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From the blurb, because it’s now a month and a half since I finished the audio book: Crush: a strong and often short-lived infatuation, particularly for someone beyond your reach… Darcy Barrett has undertaken a global survey of men. She’s travelled the world, and can categorically say that no one measures up to Tom Valeska, whose only flaw is that Darcy’s twin brother Jamie saw him first and claimed him forever as his best friend. Despite Darcy’s best efforts, Tom’s off limits and loyal to […]

The Book is more Interesting than the Content

The Enemies of Books by William Blades

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I picked this book up in an antique bookstore in Tokyo. I bought it mostly for the title, expecting a history of censorship, which is a topic I’ve always been interested in. What I got was more literally interpretation of enemies. Blades covers fire, water, vermin and dust as if they are free thinking enemies actively planning the destruction of books. His focus is entirely on the books as items that carry knowledge and not as special items in themselves. He says, “The value of […]

No bed of roses

The Language of Flowers: A Novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

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I downloaded this novel last summer because the main character is a product of the foster care system in the US and I thought it would have some interesting things to say about that system and the difficulties it presents to children in it. In some ways the novel does do that, but mainly it is a reflection on parenthood and flawed parenting. How do you become a good adult/parent if you haven’t had one? The story is told from the point of view of […]

This wasn’t God’s work. This was a health resort.

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

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I guess that I first have to admit to never reading any of Liane Moriarty’s books before. I did thoroughly enjoy the television adaptation of “Big Little Lies” but I think I just assumed that her books would be those that I like to classify as “better to watch than read.” I don’t think that I was either fair or correct about that. At least about this book.  This was a page turner. I really had no expectation that I would enjoy it as much […]



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