Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Advanced Studies in Bird Criticism.

A Dumb Bird's Field Guide to the Worst Birds Ever by Matt Kracht

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It’s hard to articulate. I love birds, they are my favorite… but I also hate birds. It’s complicated. I delight in their behavior, but so many of them are also arseholes. Take the ducks we used to keep—they fowled up the dam. The turkeys? Bloody stupid creatures. The geese? Vicious bastards*. My Auntie’s beloved silky bantam rooster, Kevin? Busted internal chronometer; would never shut up. I have been mocked by kookaburras, experienced a gleek of emu attacks, a car stripping by corellas and a blood […]

A little luxurious wish fulfillment

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren

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CBR17Bingo: Green (for the green cover) By now I’ve read a number of books by Christina Lauren*, and they’ve been a little hit or miss for me. But it hasn’t stopped me from continuing to read their novels–always hoping for the best. The Paradise Problem (2024) wasn’t my absolute favorite book from them, but it’s up there and I had a good time. When Anna Green was pre-med in college, she was desperate for housing. A friend of hers hooked her up with Liam “West” […]

The screenwriters writing the rom-com are a rom-com

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

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CBR17Bingo: Red (for the red in the cover) I can’t remember now how I found The Rom-Commers (2024) by Katherine Center, but I was probably just browsing my library’s catalog looking for an available Audiobook to listen to on my commute. This was an occasionally fun “rom-com” that played on some of the tropes of the genre for its own purposes. However, this wasn’t one of my favorites because the relationship wasn’t very memorable. Emma Wheeler is a talented writer who lives in the Northwest and is […]

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Re-Writes Your Story?

Long Live Evil: Time of Iron Book One by Sarah Rees Brennan

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Cbr17bingo Border — the main character literally crosses a border between reality and fiction, and straddles the border between good and evil; the kingdom in the story is bordered by the Dread Ravine, which is full of the undead. This book is one of the most bonkers, crazy, fun stories I’ve read in a long time, and I thank Dome’loki for the review that turned me on to it. I think we’re all familiar with time travel stories, where a character is sent back in […]

When You Stare into the Void, the Void Stares Back

Voidwalker by S. A. MacLean

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cbr17bingo – border: there are territorial disputes I think this is my first monster romance, so that was interesting. This is a romantasy set in a world divided into countless Planes within the Void. While anyone can—with help— traverse the Season-Locked Planes in which the book is set, Voidwalkers like main character Fi are able to do so independently. The book is focused primarily on the Winter Plane, which is ruled by monsters known as daeyari, who rely on human sacrifices. Antal is the lenient […]

Funny and Well-Written, but Left Me Wanting

The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes

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cbr17bingo – red This is an interesting book to review because it accomplished what it set out to do, and accomplished it very well; I’m just not sure I liked what it set out to do. It provides a snapshot of a family over the course of about 10 months. While much of it is from the first person perspective of daughter Miranda, who visits her parents monthly, there are sections that are brief scenes as though from a play, a couple of third person […]



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