Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The novel doesn’t quite live up to the magic of the setting

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

by Leave a Comment

CBR 17 BINGO: “N” (for Night) Double BINGO! Across: B, I, N, G, O, Down: Black, TBR, N, Family, Citizen The Night Circus is a much beloved novel that, on paper, seems like it has everything that should appeal to me: a Victorian timeframe, a magical setting, an air of mystery, an understated romance. I admired the author’s creativity, particularly in the way she weaves fantastical elements into the circus; yet, I felt a bit let down by the fact that I wasn’t eager to […]

Something’s Wrong

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

by 1 Comment

I’m going to be honest; I picked this one up based on the cover alone.  And like they tell you not to do, I did sort of judge this book by its cover. Well, the cover and the first section of the book. And I thought I’d be dealing with a short set of vignettes about pulp horror monsters in space. Turns out that was a bit of a lowball there—there is actually a story arc that we follow throughout the book.  Poor Dementer, has […]

“Travelling Through Thick Woods With a Troop of Goblins Is Not Unlike a Nature Hike With a Group of Grumpy Toddlers With Weapons”

Nine Goblins by T Kingfisher

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been reading some pretty heavy books recently, and have been writing some rather hefty reviews to match. So I’ve decided to tackle something a little bit lighter this time, and T Kingfisher has provided.  Nine Goblins is basically the story of two people trying to do their very best: Sergeant Nessilka, leader to her goblin cohort, and Sings-to-Trees the elven veterinarian. The goblins have been at war with the humans for quite awhile; pushed out of their own lands with nowhere else to go, […]

A Bit of Illogical Fun

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

by Leave a Comment

Bingo: “I” Seventeen year old Avery is on the ropes. Her mother has died, her father is nowhere around, and she’s living with her beloved sister until her sister’s abusive boyfriend moves in. Refusing to live with him, Avery moves into her car. What she doesn’t know is her life is about to change drastically. Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s The Inheritance Games is a YA novel. Her heroine Avery is visited by a member of the fabulously wealthy Hawthorne family, and told she must be present […]

“What we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.”

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

by Leave a Comment

Nowhere Book Bingo 25: A Bookish Memoir/biography CBR17 Pie Chart: Education CBR17 Bingo: Citizen (Nafisi lived and taught in Iran during increasingly more dictatorial strictures against its citizens) Official summary: Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic […]

Wish You Were Here

The Balloon Hunter by Hugh Howey and Elinor Taylor

by Leave a Comment

cbr17bingo – review (from TikTok) I think this might be the most unique book I’ve ever read. It’s a short novel told exclusively through postcards (that seem to be actually hand-written). The two characters are Rita, who writes the postcards and sends them out attached to balloons, and Clayton, who finds them and writes on the backs as a sort of journal. We learn from these postcards that there was an apocalypse of some sort, and Rita’s postcards bring Clayton hope. He sets off to find […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo