Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You get five made up words per story, and ideally zero rapes. (CBR12Bingo2: Fresh start)

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

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I will gorydamn post this comic every time I read a book that conspicuously changes language to show that we’re not in Kansas anymore. I get it. Distant future. Mars. Different classes differentiate themselves by the way they speak. Read you loud and clear.  I need you to not with the slang. It’s so frustrating, because there was a lot about this book I enjoyed, but the slang was just one of the affectations of the book that became distracting. The Roman gods, the Roman […]

Condescending, which in this case means talking down to your readers (CBR12Bingo: Fresh Starts)

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

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There’s a lot that I liked about this book, but the author’s affectation of using challenging words relative to the age of his audience (Yay! Do more of that!) and then defining them in a subclause (Boo! Do less of that) ends up undermining what he’s trying to do. I was a precocious reader (is there a CBR participant who wasn’t?) and the only thing I disliked more than a book too simple for my reading level was one that pretended it wasn’t. Calvin and […]

cbr12bingo – Fresh Start

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

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I have a confession to make: I judged this book by its cover. I remember the frenzy of press around this book, the series, and the *mysterious* author. I also remember seeing the cover and being completely uninterested. It is, in my opinion, a dreadful cover. It looks like it was cobbled together to act as a prop. It looks like a poorly thought out passion project. I still think the cover is awful, but I am glad that I changed my mind around shunning […]

Words mean more than what is set down on paper

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Maya Angelou’s seven autobiographies (cbr12bingo #FreshStart), covering her early childhood up to the age of 16/17.  The memoir is set in 1932- 1944, primarily in Stamps, Arkansas, with a brief interlude in St Louis Missouri, and ending with high school San Francisco. Angelou’s autobiography begins with her parents’ divorce when she is 3 years old and her only sibling, brother Bailey, is 4 years old.  They are sent by train from Long Beach, California, […]

Tricked Into a YA Romance

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Lainie Taylor

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In trying to find an agent for my own novel, I asked my friends to suggest some of their favorite books that closely resembled my fantasy so that I could shamelessly query the agents of those books for my own devices. Faintingviolet lent me Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I had no idea going into this book what it was since I’d never heard of Lainie Taylor before. But faintingviolet knows I’m not a huge fan of YA, and I pretty much avoid romance at any […]

A dream is a wish your heart makes (Cannonball!)

Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

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#CBR12 Bingo: Orange (would also work for Fresh Start) This is the start of a new series, so it stands alone. You don’t have to have read Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle series, starting with The Raven Boys, but it gives a lot of useful background to Ronan and the other Lynch brothers.   Official book description: The dreamers walk among us . . . and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming – they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their […]



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