Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I know you’re tough. But also, you don’t have to be that way with me if you don’t want to.”

Love at First Flight by Janine Amesta

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Grief can be a hard thing to balance in a romance novel. I am particularly wary of books around the grief associated with the death of dads, which is why I had initially held off on starting Janine Amesta’s Love at First Flight even though emmalita sang its praises. But I started following Amesta on Instagram and when she put out a call for ARC readers I signed up… and received a copy of her upcoming release, The Wedding Con, which is a sequel to […]

The Past Is a Different Country

The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan by Ivan Morris

American Monsters by Adam Jortner

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CBR17 Bingo: Favorite – Both books are history books about fairly specialized, off beat topics – my favorite kind. The World of the Shining Prince by Ivan Morris – 5 stars For about a century about a millennium ago, a strange era flourished in Japan where a series of boy emperors were ruled by their in-laws (who were also their grandparents, cousins, and aunts), beauty was virtue, and the failure to catch the vaguest conversational allusion to a poem spelled social ruin. This book is […]

A cautionary tale for us all

The Lion Women of Tehran: A Novel by Marjan Kamali

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Cbr17bingo Culture (would also fit diaspora) Perhaps you have seen this meme recently — a row of eight women wearing western fashions in the 1970s in Iran. These women were members of Parliament, but by the end of the decade, revolution forced Iranian women out of public life and back into traditional garb, covered from head to toe, and subject to punishment for exercising their rights. I’m old enough to remember when the Shah went into exile and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to […]

My Travels to Tanria Come to an End

The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam by Megan Bannen

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The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam is the third and final book in the series that began with The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy. It was one of my most looked forward to books of the year, and while it was my least favorite of the three, it still has that Megan Bannen way of approaching a story that I love. In her Fun Author Questions with Powell’s Books Bannen talks about loving to mash genres together so that we can all have fun in […]

Spirals, swirls, and twirls

Uzumaki by Ito, Junji

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Bingo Row 4 – Favorite Someone recently asked me who my top 5 manga creators (mangaka) are. I struggled to find a 5th and eventually said Junji Ito to end the conversation. I hadn’t read enough Ito to say he’s honestly a favorite. I’ve liked what I’ve seen, but that’s not much. Just some short stories and I have a sweatshirt with his cats on it. And that King of the Hill crossover, if that counts. So that I wouldn’t be living a lie, I […]

Thunder rolled… It rolled a six.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

Guards! Guards by Terry Pratchett

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CBR Bingo: Favourite (Pyramids is a new-to-me book in a favourite series, Discworld) CBR Bingo: ‘G’ (Guards! Guards!) Pyramids and Guards! Guards! are the latest in a series of reviews I’m doing of Terry Pratchett’s forty-books-plus Discworld series. They are the seventh and eighth books, respectively, and while Pyramids is a relative standalone (to my recollection, the only reoccurring character in this one was Death, and only briefly), Guards! Guards! is the first in a sub-series focussing on the characters of Ankh-Morpork’s Night Watch guardsmen. I haven’t read Pyramids […]



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