Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“If you can see me, it’s because I’m letting you see me.”

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

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I loved this book. I loved the very concept of The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes when it was announced, I loved wondering what the story could be. When we get to the end of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb it isn’t a cliffhanger, but there are a lot of loose ends which still need to be tied up – this is the book that does that tying, while unraveling and re-weaving a few threads of its own. So, what is this book? The […]

a collection of poisonous surfaces

Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo

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CBR Bingo Square: Snake I don’t read a lot of short stories these days except for work, so when the description of Lisa Taddeo’s Ghost Lover piqued my interest, I went ahead and put a library hold on it. I felt optimistic: I’d liked both Carmen Maria Machado’s and Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collections when I read them in the past couple years. Well. Taddeo’s a solid writer, for sure, but I did not like this collection much at all. I stubbornly finished so I could […]

A graphic history of the philosophy of science

Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy by Steven Nadler, Ben Nadler

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CBR14bingo star (the philosopher/scientists dealt with, among other things, astronomy) This graphic history of 17th century philosophical and scientific thought was written by Philosophy Professor (Univ. Wisconsin, Madison) Steven Nadler and drawn by his brother artist Ben Nadler. Using clever drawings and simple explanations, the Nadlers explain one of the most important centuries for scientific thought — the 17th century. If you ever took a Metaphysics course in college, you will recognize the names and ideas, and I wish I had had a book like […]

They share a lot, astronomy and childhood. Both are voyages across huge distances.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

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CBR14 BINGO: Minds Square (all about the mind, memories and raising a neuroatypical child) Powers is on the list of writers whose grocery lists I would read. Few can write the kind of prose this man can about the natural world. Always beautiful, unexpected, and poignant, his books are often about how we can’t seem to help ourselves from destroying the world around us. Despite that, he somehow still manages to drape a warm fuzzy blanket around our shoulders at the same time. There is a […]

“Ursa Major was fictional, only the shape of a bear bounded in stars.

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah

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CBR14BINGO: Star Square (Stars in the title, main character named after a star, all sorts of star gazing and other starry business) Joanna is a graduate student studying the nesting habits of birds at a remote cabin used by her university. A cancer survivor who underwent a double mastectomy, Joanna is also mourning the death of her mother. While finding relief in her research and the solitude of the woods, she is interrupted by a young girl who strolls out of the woods claiming to be […]

Are we not all things?

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

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CBR14 BINGO: Series (first in a duology and part of the Grishaverse series of books) I have probably already sufficiently raved about the Grishaverse books written after the initial triology, but here I go again. Nikolai was a favorite character from those books so I was excited to revisit him and spend more time with his wink-filled antics. If you haven’t read the Shadow and Bone trilogy or Six of Crows duology, stop right there. Go to the library and get cracking. From here it gets spoilery. King Nikolai is trying to create the […]



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