Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A World You Want To Wear Like a Blanket

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

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Becky Chambers’ first Monk & Robot book, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, struck a chord in me in a way that few other books have. Chambers built a world so beautiful, so full of hope, that I just wanted to curl up in it like a blanket. She continues that glorious world-building in the second book, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. Picking up right after book 1, we join Sibling Dex and Mosscap as they re-enter human territory and plan to introduce Mosscap to the […]

Or, The Cheeto-Driven Life of Crows

Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

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S.T. the crow (full name Shit Turd) realizes something is deeply wrong with his human, Big Jim, when Jim’s eyeball falls straight out of his head and lands on the ground. Things only get worse from there. The illness affecting Big Jim seems to have struck everyone else in Seattle too, and it’s turned all those MoFos (what Big Jim and S.T. call humans) into mindless horrors that will eat their pets as soon as look at them. S.T., along with Big Jim’s bloodhound Dennis, […]

A novel set in Jamestown but that is all over the place

The East Indian: A Novel by Brinda Charry

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The East Indian is a work of historical fiction set in the Jamestown settlement circa 1640. The main character, an East Indian boy who goes by the name Tony, finds himself an unwilling indentured servant there, and through him author Brinda Charry shows the reader the early days of Jamestown and the rise of slavery and bigotry based on skin color. Charry includes plenty of interesting historical facts about Jamestown as well as bits and pieces about witchcraft, Shakespeare, medicine and herbs, Native Americans, colonialism, […]

Sweet, Ghibli-esque cottage core fantasy

Flowerheart by Catherine Bakewell

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What: Catherine Bakewell’s Flowerheart is a lovely coming into one’s power tale with Studio Ghibli vibes and a charmingly rustic setting,  It’s also a fairytale with wild magic, curses, witches and wizards.  Running through is the rebuilding of a childhood friendship that turns to romance. Who: Clara Lucas is a witch in training, about to turn sixteen, and afraid of her power.  Her magic surges in wild, and sometimes destructive, ways and is affected by her mood.  On the benign side flowers will spontaneously bloom in her […]

“From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes / I waited ages to see you there”

Cassandra at the Wedding (1962) by Dorothy Baker

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I was going to make a few brief notes about this and then add this to my review roundup of the Monica Heisey and Curtis Sittenfeld books–and they sort of make a good triptych of more or less complicated women by women writers. But I ended up rambling a bit more about this one, and indeed, Cassandra of Cassandra at the Wedding is not so much complicated, or even messy, but a full on crucible of chaos and doubt and solipsism in human form, who […]

“And isn’t it just so pretty to think / All along there was some invisible string / Tying you to me?”

Really Good, Actually (2023) by Monica Heisey

Romantic Comedy (2023) by Curtis Sittenfeld

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Really Good, Actually (2023) by Monica Heisey I came across Monica Heisey on Caroline O’Donoghue’s podcast Sentimental Garbage, in an episode on ‘Break-Ups’, and then found out that Heisey had been a writer on Schitt’s Creek, which I love enough that I wrote an academic chapter on it and still managed to love it afterwards. Really Good, Actually, does not at all have a Schitt’s Creek vibe, which is good! We love a versatile creative type! It’s about Maggie and her post-divorce malaise at the […]



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