Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This book is cute. Wombats are way cuter.

The Secret World of Wombats by Jackie French

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CBR11bingo: I LOVE THIS What do I love? Wombats! To be fair, I’m partial to animals in general. I even try to coexist peacefully with centipedes, in spite of them giving me massive heebie jeebies. But wombats belong to that incredible group of mammals known as marsupials, of which I’m something of an aficionado. As my friends and more than a few disinterested strangers know, I volunteer on the weekends as a docent at the Los Angeles Zoo, where I not only educate the public […]

Any introverts here? There’s a comic book about us!

Quiet Girl in a Noisy World: An Introvert's Story by Debbie Tung

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CBR11bingo: Illustrated My sister is visiting me from Philadelphia this week, and she said to me, “I have a cute book for you to read.” Lucky me, she pulls out a book that’s not only a perfect selection for the Illustrated BINGO square, but also as adorable as the tiny nose on the author’s self-illustrated face. Writer and artist Debbie Tung has assembled a collection of comics that tell the story of her life as an introvert. Her black and white ink sketches are simple […]

I judged this book by its cover, and that was my mistake

The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder by David Quammen

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CBR11bingo: The Collection Look at that awesome cover! It has a rhino on it, for heaven’s sake, which was enough for me to pick it up and look closer. I had been browsing books in the Quadrant Book Mart, one of my favorite little spots in Easton, PA, where I was visiting with my family two Christmases ago, when I spotted that intriguing image. Something about used book stores combined with travel makes me want to test airline luggage weight limits by stocking up on […]

“You see, Watson, but you do not observe.”

House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

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CBR11bingo: Remix I recently had the good fortune to discover Anthony Horowitz, so my expectations were high when I picked up House of Silk, the author’s Sherlock Holmes mystery. I’ll get right to the point: He exceeded my expectations by a wide margin. The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle commissioned Horowitz to write a Sherlock Holmes novel, and their faith proves to be well placed. Horowitz so beautifully captures the voice of John Watson, who characteristically tells the tale, that the novel slides effortlessly into […]

Half-Cannonball with an old favorite! This Newbery Medal winner holds up.

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden

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I’ve been wanting to re-read The Cricket in Times Square for a couple of years now, but I was a little nervous because I remember loving it as a child. Revisiting a book or a movie that you remember fondly from years past is always a little risky; I’m glad I took a chance in this case, because “adult me” found this book just as delightful as “kid me” did. The story is about a cricket named Chester who, after accidentally stowing away in a […]

I’ve discovered Anthony Horowitz, and I couldn’t be happier

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz

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That’s right, I’ve discovered this wonderful mystery writer. Granted, it’s in much the same way that Columbus discovered the New World, and I imagine my fellow Cannonballers looking at me with bemused expressions and saying, “Blimey, mate, he’s been here for ages if you’d bothered to look.” My fellow Cannonballers are all British in this scenario, and they are also correct. Name recognition, which came from reading several reviews on this site, was responsible for my interest in these novels as much as the intriguing […]



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