Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The second read is even better. Like, a lot better for a book I already enjoyed once.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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CBR16 BINGO: Part 1, for the first book in the Locked Tomb series I first read Gideon the Ninth several years ago and, while it took me a little while to get into it, I ended up really enjoying it, giving it 4 stars on Goodreads. I’ve been wanting to read Harrow the Ninth, and when it finally became available through my library, I decided to reread Gideon to refresh my memory and prep my brain. Thank goodness I decided to reread Gideon, because, first of […]

Decent spy thriller with an obvious twist

Our Woman in Moscow: A Novel by Beatriz Williams

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Cbr16bingo Detente between nations and between sisters This is a spy thriller set in WWII and the decade following, but it is built around the story of estranged twin sisters. Ruth, the outgoing striking blonde, and Iris, the quiet mousy artist, grew up in a well-to-do New York family that was brought low by the stock market crash. When their brother Harry gets a job in the US foreign service in Italy on the eve of WWII, the sisters go to live there. Ruth has […]

“You’re the reason for for the word wonderful. It really shouldn’t be used for anything else.”

Funny Story by Emily Henry

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CBR16 Sweet Books: Exciting Daphne used to have the perfect life. Working as a children’s librarian, living in a beautiful house with her fiancée Peter, Then, returning from his bachelor party, a shame-faced Peter confesses that he is in fact in love with his best friend Petra, and Daphne has one week to move all her things out of the house (which is owned entirely by Peter). Concluding that Petra’s equally dumped boyfriend Miles probably has some free space in his flat, Daphne moves in […]

My Stance on Westerns Remains Unchanged – Probably Not for Me

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

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For a woman who enjoys a good Western movie (Tombstone is my jam!), I don’t read a lot – or really any – Westerns. For the 2024 Popsugar Reading Challenge, prompt #11 asks you to read a book in a genre you typically avoid. And since I’d bought an ebook of The Sisters Brothers years ago but never gotten around to reading it, I knew what book I’d use to fill that prompt. The Sisters Brothers was… interesting. Patrick deWitt doesn’t shy away from describing […]

An important book that you’ve probably never heard of

How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino

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Cbr16bingo Vintage  This book, published in Japan in 1937, is a classic of Japanese literature and served as the inspiration for the Hayao Miyazaki film “The Boy and The Heron”. This translation by Bruno Navasky is the first time How Do You Live? has been translated into English, and it features an introduction by Neil Gaiman. Genzaburo Yoshino was born in 1899 and earned a degree in philosophy from Tokyo Imperial University. The Japan of his youth was becoming increasingly militaristic and even had “thought […]

Lord of the Flies with Adults

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

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CBR16 BINGO: Fiasco, because this mission to capture Spanish treasure was a fiasco from the get-go I’ve been putting off writing this review because, while The Wager seems to have been well researched and the writing is engaging, it left me feeling a bit tepid. Nautical history isn’t my usual jam, but I do love a good survival story (see Endurance for my favorite nautical tale and one of my all-time favorite non-fiction books). In the mid-18th century, Britain and Spain were engaged in the […]



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