Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The author told me it was a bit like X-Men and I agree! But would add there is a dash of Gattaca too. – CBR14 Bingo: Minds

Warehouse Dreams by Theresa Halvorsen

by Leave a Comment

CBR14 Bingo: “Minds” – Many of the characters in this book are telepathic and psychokinetic. I love visiting the small press and publisher areas at conventions.  At Wonder Con this past Spring, I had a conversation with author Theresa Halvorsen and she convinced me to buy her book Warehouse Dreams.  She described it as a bit X-Men, as it has genetically superpowered people, and a bit Harry Potter because it is set in a school for powered kids.  I would add there is a dose […]

“Tea had featured heavily in the past fortnight. Miriam sometimes felt her belly sloshing with it, like a waterbed”

Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

by Leave a Comment

Scandal – a very British scandal, stiff upper lip, what will the neighbors say? I stumbled across Susie Steiner, the author of the DS Manon Bradshaw series, when I read of her death, July 2nd, in the Guardian (and, by the way, this is an enjoyable obituary, if an obituary can be said to be ‘enjoyable’! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jul/13/susie-steiner-obituary). Steiner was a former journalist who lived with retinitis pigmentosa and succumbed, at the very premature age of 51, to brain cancer. The obituary notes that Ms. Steiner […]

CBR 14 BINGO – Week 2 Check-in

by 9 Comments

Welcome to the Week 2 CBR 14 Bingo Check-in! You can see the card and the rules on the kick-off post. This week I stared into the void and to my surprise, there were The Spice Girls singing about friendship.   Again, big thanks to MsWas, andtheIToldYouSos, faintingviolet, teresaelectro for running Bingo while I move to the other side of the river (the Colorado River). Friendship may never end, but this move will. Real soon. Congratulations to BlackRaven for being the first to complete her […]

“Not running from your emotions is a sign of strength:” Life Lessons from Hell

Hell's Paradise Vol 1-13 by Yuji Kaku

by 3 Comments

CBR14Bingo: Monster — many of the characters are seen as monsters and they also fight monsters The story of my struggle to get all thirteen of these volumes would drag on too long, but sufficed to say that the paper shortage and resultant out of print plague striking manga has affected us all and I had to wait over a month for the tenth volume to show up. What I really liked about this series was that it’s complete and thirteen volumes is a satisfying […]

The Plot

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

by Leave a Comment

CBR14Bingo – New — This is both a newish book and an author new to me.   We begin with Jacob Finch Bonner, a character we are told early on who decided that he wanted to be a great writer long before he knew anything about voice or writing or books or anything. The Finch in his name is an affectation, taken from his love for To Kill a Mockingbird. Now 10 years into his writing career, he’s published two novels, one moderately successfully, and […]

“Life was a bitch. Love was also a bitch.”

The Country Girls: Three Novels and an Epilogue by Edna O'Brien

by Leave a Comment

CBR14 Bingo: Scandal “But we want young men. Romance. Love and things,” I said, despondently. Edna O’Brien is kind of a giant in Irish fiction, so it was kind of embarrassing, really, that I hadn’t read any of her work before this summer. (Yes, this is another installment in my Summer of Irish Fiction.) She’s now in her nineties and only recently retired, and she’s published steadily ever since her first novel, Country Girl (included in this volume), which came out in 1960 and immediately scandalized […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo