Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

CBR15 Bingo: You are Here

De kaller meg ulven (They Call Me the Wolf) by Zeshan Shakar

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#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books from different countries (Norway) CBR15 Bingo: You are Here (It’s set in Norway, where I am) 15-word-review: A son constantly yearning for more social mobility tries to understand his elderly father, unsuccessfully. Official book description (translated from Norwegian by me): “Why didn’t they have more? I remember thinking after my grandmother died. They were from here, Norwegian, shouldn’t they have had more things? Those things other Norwegian parents and grandparents have, at least a simple cabin, the kind without power or […]

Science fiction + philosophy = a curiously French novel

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

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CBR15 BINGO – Take Flight, because a flight from Paris to New York figures critically in the plot of the novel On March 10, an Air France flight leaves Paris for JFK Airport in New York City. Among the 200+ passengers and crew aboard flight 006 are a young attorney, a closeted Nigerian pop star, a hitman leading a double life, a French novelist, a young film editor and her much older romantic partner, and a seven-year-old girl. The plane encounters turbulence so fierce that […]

An earlier novel by a favorite author

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel

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CBR15 BINGO – Relation”Ship”, for the relationships between four high school friends and their families, both known and unknown I suspect I’m like most readers in that I first encountered Emily St. John Mandel when I read her brilliant and heart-aching Station Eleven. Since then, I’ve eagerly awaited her new novels and, having caught up on those, I finally turned to her earlier works. The Lola Quartet, published two years before Station Eleven, is the story of a group of high school friends in Florida who […]

“After all, the Statue of Liberty is an immigrant, too.”

Her Right Foot by Dave Eggers, Shawn Harris

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Cbr5bingo Picture this I saw a blurb about this children’s book on July 4 and thought it sounded interesting, and it absolutely is. This is a story about the making and gifting of the Statue of Liberty. While it contains fascinating facts on every page, it is the attention to one detail — the statue’s right foot — that provides a powerful and moving message to the reader.  Her Right Foot is aimed at readers aged 5-9 and contains truly delightful art. It reminded me […]

WHAT in the VICTIM-BLAMEY BULLSHIT

A Soul to Keep by Opal Reyne

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WHAT in the VICTIM-BLAMEY BULLSHIT did I JUST READ??? Okay, listen, I’m on board with the consensual monster-fucking. No question. I will read ten bajillion versions of the same basic Beauty & the Beast plot where we literally or metaphorically marry the creepy creature, and then discover that that there is actually a soulmate. Great! Gets me every time! I am even fully down for the variations where the monster love interest has totally non-human anatomy – it requires authorial creativity that I enjoy, and […]

The Question of Soulmates

Wolfsong by T.J. Klune

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The thing about Wolfsong is that it’s a keen example of the best thing about paranormal romance as a genre: it’s a way to explore a deep corner of human nature by coming at it sideways, through a fantasy concept that magnifies the details. This one, in particular, is about what it might mean to have a soulmate. People give this book some flak for the age gap – and I see that, and it didn’t need to be quite this wide, but I can […]



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