Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Owls are fan favorites

What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

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It seems to me that even people who are lukewarm about birds get excited about owls. Whether you associate them with wisdom (thanks to their connection with the goddess Athena), stuffy know-it-all-ness (à la Winnie the Pooh’s pal), or as messengers (everything from Native American folklore to Harry Potter), you have undoubtedly encountered stories about owls in some area of your early life or education. Perhaps it’s their large, all-knowing eyes, or their stillness, or the way they swoop in almost without a sound that […]

Slay Ride

Guards! Guards!: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

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I find that if I am in need of a book to make me laugh a bit and maybe think a bit, Terry Pratchett is an excellent choice. I received Guards! Guards! as part of last year’s holiday book exchange and couldn’t have been happier. I’ve only read a handful of books from Pratchett’s enormous Discworld series, but I have enjoyed every one that I’ve read and this is no exception. Guards! Guards! involves political power plays, bumbling police, a love story and dragons.  The […]

Cooking, Sexism, Rowing, and Chemistry

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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I think Lessons in Chemistry had been recommended to me no less than 10 times, by different people, before I decided to give it a try. I don’t know why I delayed reading it, probably mostly because I was trying to complete my 2023 reading challenge and couldn’t figure out how to make this fit. But this year’s challenge required a book set 24 years before I was born, and Lessons in Chemistry fit the bill! I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Based on […]

Augustine and his women

Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions by Kate Cooper

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Kate Cooper’s Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions came to my attention via an article on the shortlist for the 2023 Cundill History Prize. (BTW, that’s a good-looking group of books, if you’re a history nerd.) I teach Augustine’s Confessions every spring, but always find it a bit of hard going in a literature class, so anything that might help me out, I try to look at. (Last spring it was Natalie Carnes’s Motherhood: A Confession which is also fantastic.) Cooper’s central idea […]

“Being a serial killer who kills serial killers is a great hobby… Until you find yourself locked in a cage.”

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

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CBR16 Sweet Books: Excited (I love this book and would like everyone I know to read it, but also understand that it’s very much NOT for everyone). Spoiler warning! I will do my best to review this without major plot spoilers, but if you want to experience this book without any prior knowledge of the contents, possibly skip this review until you’ve read the book. Sloane “Blackbird” Sutherland and Rowan “Butcher” Kane have a rather unusual meet cute. He finds her locked in a cage, […]

A promising debut novel

The Write Escape by Charish Reid

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3.5 stars Nowhere Book Bingo: A book with a BIPOC author and main character CBR16 Sweet Books: Cozy In very short order, Antonia Harper has lost her job and discovered that her fiancée was cheating on her, very shortly before the wedding. The honeymoon was supposed to be in Ireland, and Antonia decides to travel there by herself. Her spiteful ex has cancelled their original reservations, but she rents a cottage to stay in instead. With nothing else to distract her, Antonia decides to make […]



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