Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A refreshingly complete story to start a magical series

The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith

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Elena is a toad, though she knows she knows that she should be a witch. Thus starts The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith. Elena breaks the curse on herself and returns to her home, Chateau Renard, a famed vineyard in France. What she finds is that her home has been sold to a lawyer-turned-winemaker who, instead of relying on a vine witch to support and augment the growth, harvest, and fermentation of grapes into wine, relies on science to create his wine to disappointing […]

It makes sense that my US History teacher would love this book so much

The Eight by Katherine Neville

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One of the last things I did before graduating high school in 2009 was to ask all my favorite teachers what their favorite novels were. My US History teacher said that the book she goes back to over and over is The Eight by Katherine Neville. This book has been on my TBR list since then but I have never gotten around to reading it. I can finally take it off that list. This book is expansive. From 18th Century nuns to 20th computer experts, […]

cbr12bingo – Money!

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

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Another square down, and another trip down (also up, under, and through) the Thames (looking at you, Rivers of London). The Thames is the titular river of Once Upon a River another story about telling stories from Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale). A mysterious man and a young girl come crashing through the doors of The Swan, an inn on the river that is well known for it’s story and for it’s story tellers. The man is grievously injured; the girl is stone dead. The […]

There’s always been a rainbow hangin over your head (CBR12Bingo: Violet – Blackout)

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

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I have to be honest, I never got the cult of Marilyn, even with an aunt whose sloe eyes and platinum hair invited a comparison she doubled down on by naming my cousin after Monroe. I’ve seen quite a few of her performances, and wasn’t unimpressed – you have to be pretty clever to play dumb convincingly, and even in her low-watt-bulb roles Marilyn never seemed dumb, just sort of airily unconcerned with whether she seemed smart or not. I’ve seen Niagara, I’ve seen Some […]

There is grandeur in this view of life (CBR12Bingo: Green – Double bingo)

Human Errors by Nathan Lents

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Success gets all the headlines, but I’m far more interested in failures. Success can be attributable to luck, or timing, or actual skill, or some combination of small factors that ultimately propel a project to a good outcome. Failure? More often than not, you know why something failed, and that makes the next attempt better. Failure is a sign of reach exceeding grasp, as it should be. I don’t care why something works, I want to know why it doesn’t. The human body is no […]

Hyperopic people can’t see well either…. (CBR12Bingo: Yellow – Double Bingo)

Farsighted by Steven Johnson

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First off, credit where credit is due: Steven Johnson is a renaissance man. I thought the name looked familiar, and realized that he’s the author of The Ghost Map – the amazing book about contact tracing leading to the discovery of the nature of Cholera –  which I thoroughly enjoyed and wouldn’t have thought was by the same author given the difference in subject matter. He’s also the author of Where Good Ideas Come From, which I haven’t read but definitely seems a bit closer […]



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