Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I’m on a roll with Japanese stories containing cats! (This review is cat approved)

The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu

by Leave a Comment

CBR 17 BINGO: “B” (for “Blanket”) On a recent visit to my local library, I was attracted to this book by the adorable illustration on the cover. Reading the book jacket, I learned that The Blanket Cats is a collection of seven stories about a pet shop in Tokyo that rents out cats for three days and two nights. Each cat comes with a special blanket to which they are very attached (do not lose or wash that blanket!). Some customers have practical reasons for […]

“The Caravan of life is moving by, Quick! to your places in the passing show.”

Caravan by Dorothy Gilman

by Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: Culture – Caressa encounters and immerses herself in multiple cultures during her wanderings through the Sahara, including the Tuareg and the Hausa. By the age of sixteen Caressa has been a carnie, a Boston schoolgirl, and the wife of an anthropologist – but in her years in the Sahara desert, she will go on to become a widow, a sorceress, a slave, and much more. The trouble with this book is that the description is rather misleading. There’s a little magic, and a […]

I was hoping to be able to relate to this book, and holy hell, I could not

All Fours by Miranda July

by Leave a Comment

CBR 17 BINGO: Borrow (I borrowed this book from a friend who read it for her book club) As a woman who feels like she’s been stuck in perimenopause hell forever, my ears perk up when I hear about works that touch on this topic. So when my friend mentioned that All Fours centers on a woman in her mid-forties who is experiencing some of these challenges, I asked to borrow it. I had seen a couple of reviews here on CBR, so I knew […]

A new Lucy Parker romance with actors falling for each other

Misdirected by Lucy Parker

by 1 Comment

CBR17 Bingo: Work (Actors on set – and in private) I read this book at the end of March, and as such, I’m going to rely on the official plot summary to help me out here: Hattie Murton never dreamed of TV stardom. A straight-from-a-fairytale encounter with a casting agent somehow landed her a part on what she’d thought would be a one-off pilot for Leicester Square, a bodice-ripping drama adapted from a bestselling romance novel. Buoyed by a surge in demand for romantic dramas, […]

Soft adorable romance!

Last First Kiss by Julian Winters

by Leave a Comment

Last First Kiss fulfills the “work” square on CBR17 bingo. I got to read Julian Winters’ adult debut, I Think They Love You, earlier this year and absolutely adored it so when I saw he had another adult romance coming out, I couldn’t wait, especially when I realized it follows Jordan and Jamie, Denz’s cousin and best friend respectively, who were glimpsed as a possibility by the end of I Think They Might Love You. All that to say I needed to read this book […]

“They’re the ones who’ll hate you / When you think you’ve got the world all sussed out”

Assassin's Apprentice (1995) by Robin Hobb

by 6 Comments

He goes by ‘Boy’ for his first years, then ‘Fitz’ and ‘Bastard’, then FitzChivalry Farseer, illegitimate son of Chivalry Farseer, son of the enigmatic King Shrewd. This is for the Bingo Family square; Fitz has a family, a name, a legacy–but he never knew his own father, his grandfather buys his loyalty rather than offering him affection, and one of his uncles wants him humiliated at best and dead at worst. I read Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy when I was a teen with the time […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo