Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s SUPERBUNS!

Superbuns!: Kindness Is Her Superpower by Diane Kredensor

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cbr16bingo  Golden (for the “golden rules”)  Superbuns!: Kindness Is Her Superpower by Diane Kredensor is a cute story about real superheroes. Or more accurately, what makes you, an everyday person, a “superhero” to other people. There are cute illustrations that are fairly simple, but still support the story. This allows you to focus on the text, but are still able to enjoy the art as it is not lacking in fun or details Buns is a bunny who likes helping people in her community. The […]

Emmalita was right – this is great!

What is Love? by Jen Comfort

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CBR16 Bingo: Games Straight-laced university professor Teddy Ferguson has had a record-long stint of victories on the popular trivia game show Answers! when his confidence and entire existence are rocked by the appearance of the beautiful and confident Maxine Hart. She ruins his pre-show ritual by eating a specific doughnut by stealing it directly in front of him, taking one bite and then throwing it in the trash. One very memorable kiss and the fact that Maxine completely obliterates him on the game show means […]

Trans and Transitions

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham

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Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: liberate. Carlotta is coming home from prison, which is some sort of liberation and she’s trying to find her way as a trans woman in the world, seeking her own path to liberation. I’ve written before about my beef with contemporary writing and how smarmy it’s become. Every villain has to twirl their mustache, every hero has to overcome a specific obstacle to warm the audience’s heart, everything is so boringly Manichaean. There’s little space for complexity, imperfection, growth, […]

Beautiful, harrowing and oh so sad

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

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CBR16 Bingo: Liberate (our protagonists are fighting in World War I to keep the world safe from the Germans) Official plot summary, because I finished this book in early April: It’s 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, […]

This one goes to a pretty dark place

Vicious: A Novel (Villains Book 1) by V.E. Schwab

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Cbr16bingo Part 1 This is the second novel I’ve read recently that deals with heroes and villains, and with the notion that “heroes” are actually pretty terrible people. Hench was a great read, and I was immediately sucked in to Vicious, too. In both stories, the “bad guys” actually are the people who seem to have a better sense of what is the right thing to do, but they still aren’t completely good people. This is a pretty dark novel and absolutely not for the […]

When the Invisible Man’s invisible dog disappears, how do you know? 

Nancy Spector, Monster Detective 1: The Case of the Missing Spot by Stephen W Martin

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cbr16bingo Part One Nancy Spector, Monster Detective 1: The Case of the Missing Spot by Stephen W Martin and illustrated by Linh Pham was a win from the publisher and sent to me as an online reader copy. I had forgotten I had signed up for and/or requested it, but it was a delightful surprise as I came away from it with a bit of a giggle, and a jonesing for the second read.  The only bump was that some of the information we are […]



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