Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Paranormal Activity but Passive-Aggressive

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St James

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Bingo Square: B (Book) This wasn’t my favorite St. James, though it was still an entertaining read. But when reading a Simone St. James novel, I guess I just want a bit more ghost story to it all. Of course there is a ghost and a supernatural connection because it is after all a novel by Simone St. James but after a spooky set up in the beginning, the supernatural elements feel a bit less relevant for the plot than in some of her other […]

Trans YA horror in a small town

Lockjaw by Matteo L. Cerilli

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Lockjaw by Matteo L Cerilli is a YA horror that explores small town niceness and what makes a monster real. I’m still fairly newly into horror and very particular, but I like seeing the themes of monstrosity explored through marginalized lenses, so I took the chance to read Lockjaw with glee. This is a story told from several points of view and does some time jumps that aren’t obvious, for reasons that become evident about halfway through the book. I found several elements absolutely heartbreaking, […]

Childhood Nostalgia / American Propaganda

The Kachina Doll Mystery by Carolyn Keene

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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I devoured both the Nancy Drew and Little House books when I was in elementary school, so it feels a little odd to read them in such close succession now. I still enjoy them, but I’ve rather lost the cuddly feeling since then. It’s more obvious to adult me that the books were written in the expectation of reaching a certain sort of child, and that child did not look like me. The Kachina Doll Mystery – 3 stars When Nancy Drew is summoned to […]

Perfect Halloween Read

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

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I am part of a YA for everyone book group at my local library. The organizer tries to pick books that fit the time of year, so for October, Halloween, we are reading Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. I had no idea what this book was about, which is sometimes a great way to be pleasantly surprised.  Well, I really liked this book, it was such a fun ghost story. Yadriel is a trans teen who is trying to become a brujo. His Latinix family […]

Poltergeist, circa 1930

The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale

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English woman Alma Fielding has had a hard life. She has had numerous health issues, is in a dull marriage and struggling financially. The world around her is in chaos, too – war with Germany seems imminent. And to add to all of her stress she seems to have attracted an at first mischievous, at times violent spirit – a poltergeist. Alma’s haunting has attracted the local newspaper, and also the attention of Hungarian emigre Nandor Fodor, a journalist turned psychic phenomena investigator. Fodor has created his […]

“You can’t run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.”

Ghost by Jason Reynolds

Patina by Jason Reynolds

Sunny by Jason Reynolds

Lu by Jason Reynolds

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CBR11 Bingo — And so it begins. I’ve desperately been trying to get my kids to read this summer. But in between camps, and summer classes, and the never-ending monster that is swim team, there just hasn’t been a lot of reading going on. So I’ve tried my best to make it easy for them, and to help them pick books that I just know they’ll respond to. Like I’m their personal book sommelier. And so far, we’ve had pretty good results. I picked up […]



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