Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Well, I am not proud of it, but a fellow has to make a living and I was blessed with two assets – a passably handsome face and an exquisitely persuasive tongue.

An Impossible Imposter by Deanna Raybourn

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CBR14BINGO: Font Square (BINGO! Shadow to Font) (I’m not sure what the fonts are, but they grace the cover of every Veronica Speedwell novel along with that unmistakable silhouette cover art situation. I can spot it on a crowded bookshelf a mile away and it always makes me happy.) Somehow I managed not to snatch this up as soon as it came out. Usually, I put myself on the library wait list before the next book in the Veronica Speedwell mystery series is published. Raybourn is a favorite of mine, and […]

Duck Heist!!!! #CBRBINGO – Bird

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

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This is a silly, inconsequential—one might almost say *cozy*—book that is largely about the retrieval of a wooden duck, and I liked it very much. I really love Linda Holmes. I’m in for her whole thing, after this book. I was hoping Evvie Drake Starts Over wouldn’t be a fluke, and it wasn’t. While I didn’t like Flying Solo as much as I loved Evvie Drake, this was a really good time. You don’t often get stories from the POV of a woman who isn’t […]

Don’t mess with an angry gingerbread cookie!

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

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I really adored A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. This charming young adult fantasy novel was so much fun to read. A shout out to the YA librarian who mentioned how much she had loved this book. Mona is a 14 year old baker who has some limited magic capabilities. She can do things like make gingerbread cookies dance. One day, she finds a dead girl in the bakery and it turns out all magickers in her town are being targeted and […]

COVID and Traveling Gave Me Time to Read

Normal People by Sally Rooney

The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey

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I had started reading Normal People quite some time ago but put it down for long enough that when I was ready to start reading it again, I decided to just start over, and I think that helped my enjoy the book more. The re-read of part of the book helped me understand the characters in a way that I hadn’t the first time I started reading it. At this point, probably most people know the plot. Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron grew up in the […]

Moriens sed Invictus ~ Dying but Unconquered

O Caledonia: A Novel by Elspeth Barker

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O Caledonia was originally published in 1991 and was reissued last year with a new introduction by Maggie O’Farrell. I’d never heard of this book before but saw it at the bookstore. The cover looked like it would be suitably dark for a Halloween-ish read, and it is. This book might be for you if you enjoyed I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith) or We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson) as, like those two novels, it features a teenaged protagonist living in […]

Blind Date with a Book

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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Last spring I read about something called “Blind Date With a Book” that sounded like fun. Libraries apparently do them, and it involves choosing a book, wrapped in paper so you cannot see the title, based on some descriptive words (mystery, romance, other voices, etc). It’s a fun way to change up your reading and maybe try something you wouldn’t have picked for yourself. Over on Etsy, a number of sellers offer this same service for a range of fees and I decided to give […]



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