Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Over her golden yard and the glittering hills beyond, into the darkness of the trees…”

Golden Age by Jane Smiley

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***Spoilers throughout*** Well, I finished this trilogy and this was a better book than the second one. I think because Smiley starts killing people off in this one, the cast feels less unwieldy and more focused. This book is more of a victory lap in terms of drawing everyone’s narratives to a close. I again had the issue that such dramatic things happen to these people that it feels unrealistic and kept taking me out of the narrative. Any time I spend most of the […]

A time travel classic I could have safely missed out on.

Time and Again (Time, #1) by Jack Finney

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 30/30 A poopy book to finish out the month on. For a while, I was actually enjoying this quite a bit, but as it went on, I just couldn’t with it anymore. The main vehicle for the time traveling was . . . laughable. There. I’ll say it. But more importantly, how can a book about time travel be so dull? Really, this just wasn’t for me, but I guess I’ll try and justify it down below. […]

[got me] to a nunnery!

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Heloise & Abelard: A New Biography by James Burge

The Tigress of Forlì: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de Medici by Elizabeth Lev

Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love by Myriam Cyr

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I thought I was going to need some time to recover from the exquisite The Everlasting, but really it flung me head-first into a literal rabbit-hole. A warren. An abbey. A nunnery, if you will. Also- The Atlantic just posted a list of books that were done dirty by pandemic releases, and OF COURE The Everlasting resides within those vaulted halls. I was immediately drawn to Caterina Riario Sforza de Medici after she was mentioned several times in The Everlasting. A distant relative of her spots her likeness in the […]

Growing up is hard to do

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

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3.5 stars Official book description: Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father–despite his hard-won citizenship–Lily and Kath risk everything to […]

Not quite my cup of tea this time around

An Impossible Impostor by Deanna Raybourn

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3.5 stars First of all, this is book 7 in an ongoing series. I would not recommend that a new reader start here. The first book in the series is A Curious Beginning. Now for the official book description, because my memory is like a sieve: London, 1889. Veronica Speedwell and her natural historian beau Stoker are summoned by Sir Hugo Montgomerie, head of Special Branch. He has a personal request on behalf of his goddaughter, Euphemia Hathaway. After years of traveling the world, her […]

Two mysteries for Flavia. . .well, maybe one and a half

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley

Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley

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Cozy mysteries are a great solace during troubling times, which makes me wonder why I’ve bothered to read anything else since 2017. I started reading the Flavia de Luce series at the end of 2020 and finally got around to picking it back up a few weeks ago. (Thanks, ‘Murica!) For those unfamiliar with the series, it stars an 11-year-old girl named Flavia de Luce who is an aspiring chemist and amateur detective. No doubt she would take offense to both the “aspiring” and “amateur” […]



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