Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A real witch is the best kind of person

A Hat Full of Sky: A Tiffany Aching Adventure by Terry Pratchett

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This is the second book of Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series. Tiffany is a young witch living on “the Chalk,” a land full of sheep and the fairies known as the Nac Mac Feegle (NMF), or Wee Free Men. In book one, 9-year-old Tiffany teamed up with the NMF to save her brother and the world from the queen of the fairies. Her witchly abilities were evident to other witches like Miss Tick and Mistress Weatherwax, who gifted Tiffany a hat. A witch’s hat is […]

This is what I would say if I could, to all the smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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I know that this novel is a contemporary spin on Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. In fact, almost everything written about this book centers around that comparison. I guess that her naming of the main character (also the title of the book) makes that discussion unavoidable. But, I would argue that a lot of Kingsolver novels are Dickensian: following the lives of people who are often dismissed as unintelligent, unapproachable, and strange. People who are held responsible for their own misfortune. People that are kept in […]

It was beautiful, and then somebody else, the rest of the world, made it not beautiful.

Now Is Not The Time To Panic by Kevin Wilson

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I used to spend a month every summer visiting my dad in a household that was absolutely free-range. It was the late 1970s and early 1980s so that wasn’t that unusual, but it was certainly a more unsupervised and fend-for-yourself-until-dinner situation than I experienced with my mother. I have very distinct memories from that time, hanging out across the street with a neighborhood girl my age. Both of her parents worked so we would spend all day in the air conditioning watching MTV, drinking (sometimes […]

The whole world is a nerd.

Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell

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I’m waiting for Rowell to send another satisfyingly awkward love story (without magic and told mostly with words and not pictures) out into the world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the Simon Snow books. I also enjoyed Pumpkinhead even though graphic novels really aren’t my thing. But, I yearn for books like Eleanor and Park and Fangirl and Attachments. So, I attempted to scratch that itch with this set of short stories. I had read a couple of these in other collections […]

Justice and the law aren’t the same thing.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

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I have read nearly all of Deanna Raybourn’s books and this one is a definite departure from her usual historical fiction. However, she keeps her penchant for mystery solving shenaningans here, and her trademark sense of humor is intact. Just a wee bit snarkier. Four retiring lady assassins are invited by their former employer to literally sail into the next phase of their lives aboard a complimentary cruise. How are former assassins allowed to just retire and sail off into the sunset, you ask? Well, […]

I think death must be an absolute triumph.

Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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CBR15 PASSPORT (Stamp #6: Books recommended by friends. Namely ALL of you.) When Cannonballers can’t shut up about a book, you read it. I’d like to say I’m sorry it took me so long to read it, but…nope. ‘Cause I have the opportunity to read the other two books in this trilogy without waiting for them to be published. Hee hee! Yikes! You guys were not wrong about this one. In the last year or so I have found my way back to science fiction and […]



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