Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Parent Trap meets Freaky Friday without the magic but lots of music

Mirror to Mirror by Rajani LaRocca

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Awhile back I found a reader copy by Rajani LaRocca called Mirror to Mirror. I was interested in it due to the diverse characters and the prose poetry format.  However, as I started reading (at lunch) it was going slowly, and I put it aside. I picked it up months later and was able to finish it finally. It was mostly worth the wait. I say mostly, as for me, there were a few bumps. I was not a fan of some characters, and a […]

Drama Queen

Antony & Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

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Ah, Shakespeare- takes me right back to high school English class! (Truthfully though: I hadn’t read this play nor seen it performed, but the general strokes of the story were familiar.) Ready? Here goes: Marc Antony, the great Roman general, is uneasily sharing power with Octavius, Julius Ceaser’s nephew, and a third general, Lepidius. Antony has come to Egypt as part of the triumvirate’s previous battles against outside enemies and fallen in love with the seductive Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra. Now that the outside enemies have […]

No more Tomorrow and I’m ok with that

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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Probably unpopular, or at least in the minority, review ahead; I did not especially enjoy Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. The narrative style made it a little hard to tell the difference between Said and Sam’s perspectives, and given that the novel switches back and forth, giving them more distinctive voices would have been nice. They also have really similar personalities in a lot of ways; both have traumas in their pasts which the other sort of knows about but doesn’t seem to want to […]

“Olive’s not a hundred dollar bill. There are going to be people in her life who don’t like her.”

Act by Kayla Miller

Clash by Kayla Miller

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I continue my slow acquisition of this series through random bookstore visits with Act and Clash. The series follows Olive as she learns various important lessons in middle school about friendship and standing up for what’s right. In Act, Olive finds out that some kids are unable to go on field trips because their parents can’t afford the extra cost. She decides to run for student council and this causes some turmoil in her friendships and requires her to learn how to get her message […]

A Loss of Innocence

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

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Our Town by Thornton Wilder My rating: 4 of 5 stars “Our Town” is one of those plays that takes you by surprise. I first read it in my master’s program in an “Modern American Drama” class. I had heard of the play but never read it. From the beginning, Wilder establishes that this play is unlike others of its time. The Stagemaster (narrator) constantly breaks the fourth wall but also interacts with the characters in the play. There’s audience participation (they’re plants from the […]

Problem play indeed.

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare

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I will be honest with you here, and let you know that I barely remember this play. There were only a handful of Shakespeare’s plays that I made it out of school not having read, and this was one of them. I’ve been meaning to read it for years but never seemed to get around to it. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t read it, because at least there was a pleasing sense of mystery to it, with me wondering what it was about and only […]



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