Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Dear diary, today I met a woman wearing too many buttons who does not understand what a metaphor is”

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

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CBR14 Bingo: Fonts (Meg’s whole livelihood involves lettering, fonts, and calligraphy. Also, this was the first book on my TBR I could think of when I saw the bingo prompt.) Meg Mackworth is known as “the Planner of Park Slope” and uses her hand lettering skills and creativity to design custom journals and planners for the rich and influential in New York City. Lately, she’s really feeling the pressure of all the work and suffering from a creative block – not exactly a good thing […]

Even Dame Agatha phoned one in now and then

Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie

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CBR14 BINGO: Elephant, because it’s right there in the name Double BINGO! Diagonal: Snake, Adapt, Star, Bird, Elephant 4 corners and center: Snake, Bodies, Gaslight, Elephant, Star Agatha Christie, why can’t I quit you? Even though I realized in recent years that Christie’s writing was not the great literature I thought it was when I was 12 years old, I still find comfort in the familiar characters and, dang it, even if she doesn’t give you much in the way of character development and dialogue, […]

“When a shark offers up a pearl, be wary of its teeth.”

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

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So it looks like after Winter’s Orbit,  I’ve jumped straight into more political fiction! Rather than sci-fi, this one is fantasy, and rather than an empire spanning cluster of planets, we have an empire spanning an archipelago. A sort of fantasy Moluccas, if you will. And while this is not a romance, it does have one of the very cutest animal sidekicks I’ve come across in a long while The empire of The Bone Shard Daughter is ruled by a man who favours tight control […]

“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. … You are allowed to just live.” – Bingo #3!

A Psalm for the Wild-built by Becky Chambers

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CBR14 Bingo: “Cozy” – This book is like a warm, reassuring hug. I first read A Psalm for the Wild-Built in December 2021.  This is a reread in preparation for A Prayer for the Crown-Shy.  The first time reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built, I was blown away.  Chamber’s evocative writing, meditations on purpose and our place within the natural world, along with the depictions of the soothing powers of tea spoke directly to me.  A Psalm for the Wild-Built was just as affective the second time as […]

The First Cut Is The Deepest

The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh

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Read as part of CBR14 Bingo: holiday. I was gifted this book for Christmas a few years ago and used this Bingo as an excuse to finally read it. Again, all love to book bingos for helping me find gems that are lingering on my very own shelves. I used the holiday square as an excuse to get to this one. I had considered donating it a few times, seeing as how the reviews were good but not exactly rapturous. I have a lot of […]

Infused with humanity

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

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CBR 14 BINGO: Star, because it takes place mostly in space BINGO: Gaslight, Scandal, Star, Monster, Bodies My experience with Ray Bradbury up to this point has been limited to Fahrenheit 451, which is a top-notch novel–at least, I remember it being so when I read it, oh, thirty years ago. Having picked up The Martian Chronicles, I’m ashamed that I’ve neglected Bradbury for so long. A science fiction writer with broad appeal, Bradbury infuses every story, even those about Martians, with humanity. The Martian […]



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