Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Of course cats are sentient and working with villains

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

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CBR15 Bingo: Adulthood – Charlie struggles with many of the downsides to adulthood, loans, parental loss, divorce, and barely scrapping by.  Bingo #3! History (replaced with Nostalgia) to Europe. John Scalzi is almost an auto buy for  our household.  However, the most recently trilogy had us feeling a little cold.  Then last year’s The Kaiju Preservation Society was a spectacular showcase of what makes Scalzi such a fun writer.  Based on The Kaiju Preservation Society I was already looking forward to my preorder of Scalzi’s newest […]

A fairytale in all but name

Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher

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CBR15 Bingo: Using my Getaway key to replace History with Nostalgia and make bingo #2! Diagonal, History to Sex.  I used Nettle and Bone for nostalgia because fairytales always make me feel nostalgic for my childhood reading.  Note: It has been awhile since I listened to this book and I have forgotten names.  Also, I don’t know how names are spelled so please forgive any transgressions. It feels like a few weeks ago (but the reality is it was probably several months ago because time is […]

None for me, thanks

The Invisible Hour: A Novel by Alice Hoffman

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When I picked up this novel, I did not know who Alice Hoffman was. I have since learned that she has written many novels which often involve the use of magic and the supernatural. I suppose if I had known that going in, the twists in The Invisible Hour would have been less startling to me but I’m not sure it would have changed my feeling about this novel, which is pretty “meh.” The Invisible Hour starts with a very interesting premise that drew me […]

CBR15 Bingo: Africa (Triple Bingo and Blackout)

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamande Ngozi Adichie

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CBR15 Bingo: Africa Not going to lie, I originally planned to read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, but as we were nearing the end of October and I had this last square to complete on my Cannonball Bingo card, I decided to be strategic and read something rather shorter instead. Hence this essay, which I’m ashamed to say is the first thing I’ve actually read by Ms. Adichie. Do I own all three of her novels in e-book form? I do indeed. Should I read them […]

“And say your mea culpa, which you gradually forgot”

Ride the Pink Horse (1946) by Dorothy B. Hughes

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Cannonball Read 15 Bingo Square “On the Road”: Three men have travelled from Chicago to Santa Fe in a complicated game of cat and mouse I think that Dorothy B. Hughes’s writing, at its best, possesses a terrible beauty, to borrow a phrase from W.B. Yeats’s “Easter, 1916.” Elsewhere, of course, Yeats wrote that “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”, a fragment of a phrase that beats at the dark heart of noir fiction, where comforting myths of love, or integrity, or fairness implode […]

Five stars for The Five. Plus, a quadruple BINGO and board blackout!

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

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CBR15 BINGO (QUADRUPLE BINGO AND BINGO BLACKOUT): History, because it tells the true, untold history of the women murdered by Jack the Ripper Vertical bingo: South America, Dwelling, Hold Steady, Strange Worlds, History Horizontal bingo: History, Bodies, Bodies, Adulthood, Edibles, Europe Diagonal bingo: History, Queer Lives, North America, Violence, Sex 4 corners and center square: South America, Sex, Europe, History, North America I’m a fan of historical true crime stories, particularly those that happened before the 20th century; however, I have never read a book […]



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