Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Turning planets into origami

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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CBR14 Bingo: Cold (the majority of this novel is set in spaaace, which is famously very cold) It would also work for Star and Series.  Official book description: Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade his mind in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. Eighty years ago, Earth was destroyed by an alien enemy. Many escaped, but millions more died. So mankind created enhanced humans ­such as Idris – […]

“When she looked at photos of her children when they were little, she sometimes thought, Did I notice how beautiful they were? Was I actually there? Did I just skim the surface of my entire damned life?”

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

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Cannonball Read Bingo: Snake I was in the middle of dragging my way through “The Three Body Problem” (good book, but woof, is it dense) and saw this one on a perusal of my library’s “Hot Reads” shelf, the newest from Liane Moriarty. I greatly enjoyed the audio version of “Big Little Lies” and wanted to give her another go, this time reading it the old-fashioned way. I figured it would be a bit of summer fun reading, and I was right. This book is […]

“People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.”

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

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Cannonball Read Bingo Square: Cold I”m late to the game on this 2012 book about Ove, who I would dub the King of all Curmudgeons. Picking this book for the “cold” bingo square was a no-brainer because his character first presents as the chilliest of all cold characters, with rarely a kind word to say about anyone. I personally would crown Ove as the King of all Curmudgeons. But of course, he would bristle at the honorific, belittling the idea that a) someone would pay […]

Three Books and a Bingo

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

The Swimmers by Julia Otsuka

Nuclear Family by Joseph Han

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Today I’ll catch up with some reviews that have been waiting for a bit AND make a complete Bingo across the top row! First up: For the spot Monster, I offer: To Paradise by Yanagihara. I chose “monster” for this book because of its intimidating length (over 700 pages! I don’t read tomes that like very often any more) and because I felt very nervous about reading it after being so utterly destroyed by A Little Life. Well. I can’t exactly say that this book matches ALL […]

Excellent world building that felt a little cut short

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Binti: Sacred Fire by Nnedi Okorafor

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BINGO – Star Binti runs away from her home, her family, her people, and even her planet to attend school. She is hesitant to leave even though she knows there are incredible opportunities waiting for her at Oomza University. With only a jar of otjize, a clay mixture from her community that she rubs over all of her skin and hair, her edan, a piece of ancient technology she discovered in the desert, and her nearly magical ability to see and grab mathematical equations, Binti […]

Different Scandals in Different Places

A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows

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Bingo 11: Scandal A Strange and Stubborn Endurance opens with a scandal of sorts (or at least the inciting incident that gets the plot going does), and there’s a fear and use of gossip that gets brought up and/or used off and on throughout the story. There is a content warning at the beginning about the scandal which involves on-page sexual violence as well as self-harm and suicidal ideation; side note, I’m a little surprised that the one murder that does succeed before the final […]



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