Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I love the smell of colonialism in the morning

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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I was so disappointed in the last two books I read that I decided to shift gears and read something more “weighty.” I’d been missing beautiful writing and thought-provoking content, so I turned to my TBR list for ideas and came up with Heart of Darkness, a short novel that I’d always meant to read but had never gotten around to. It’s an important English novella published in 1899 by a Polish author about a British steamboat captain sailing through Africa; 80 years later it […]

“Today I am choosing to love the person in front of me.”

They Went Left by Monica Hesse

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A few years ago, I reviewed Monica Hesse’s YA novel Girl in the Blue Coat, a story of intrigue and mystery set amongst the resistance in Amsterdam during WWII. It was an excellent novel, and Hesse has done it again with They Went Left. This YA novel features another teenaged girl as protagonist, but this time the story is set in the immediate aftermath of the war. Nazis exterminated Zofia’s parents, grandmother and aunt, and they nearly killed her as well. She is suffering from […]

A novel for Juneteenth

Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether

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As I started to write this review, I did a little search on Louise Meriwether and it turns out the NYT ran a story on her today. I first heard of Meriwether only recently, which seems to be a common story despite the fact that Meriwether’s much lauded first novel Daddy Was a Number Runner was published in 1970. Did you know that there is a prize in her name? The Louise Meriwether First Book Prize …was founded in 2016 to honor author Louise Meriwether […]

“Hope, because that is what we must give him, what we must give all of them. Hope and guidance and a place to call their own, a home where they can be who they are without fear of repercussion”

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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It’s rare that I say everyone should read a particular book, but this is a book everyone, of all ages, should read.  TJ Klune has spun a beautiful story in The House in the Cerulean Sea.  It’s about finding one’s place in the world, learning to re-write the narrative others have placed on one’s self, that bigotry and fear can be overcome, and that acceptance can be found, starting sometimes as small as with one person to then slowly grow. Linus Baker is an investigator […]

Believing is seeing

A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark

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In A Master of Djinn, writer P. Djeli Clark takes his readers back to Cairo, 1912, and a world where magical creatures such as djinn have become a normal part of life along with their incredible magical mechanical inventions. This book, which is a full-length novel rather than a novella like his previous works, features Agent Fatma el-Sha’arwi, special investigator with the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. She was the main character in A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and it’s wonderful to […]

So much fun it helped with my reading slump!

Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

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Fellow Cannonballer, Teresaelectro, first brought Heroine Complex to my attention.  Then it was a featured book title for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month at Mysterious Galaxy.  I was about to go and to pick up May’s book order, when on a whim I called and asked if Heroine Complex was in stock.  It was and I purchased it over the phone, to bring home with the books that were waiting at the store. Due to events this year, I have found reading to be […]



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