Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Adaptations of Classic tales

A Taste of Honey: Kamala Outsmarts the Seven Thieves ( by Rebecca Sheir

The Tale of the Unwelcome Guest: Nasruddin Teaches the Town a Lesson by Rebecca Sheir

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A few reviews back I wrote about another A Circle Round Book by Rebecca Sheir. Each one has been illustrated by different people. Therefore, that change might help you enjoy one over the other. But also, the flow and tone of the story is slightly different and that can help one’s enjoyment of them. The Great Ballgame was illustrated by Joshua Pawis-Steckley and is based on Native American mythology and culture. A Taste of Honey: Kamala Outsmarts the Seven Thieves (illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat) has […]

Some Legends Don’t Withstand the Test of Time

Bram Stoker's Dracula by Bram Stoker, Edited by Jan Needle

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Full disclosure, I had no idea I’d ordered the edited and abridged version from the library, but I decided to give it a go anyway since the abridged version was still some 400 pages. I never had to read “Dracula” in school, and while, like most people, I’m aware of the general premise of the story, my goal of reading at least one classic a year put this on my spooky-reads list for Halloween. Long story short, A real estate agent, Jonathan Harker, goes to […]

Started November 12th. Finished January 12th. The breaks in reading were NECESSARY

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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…but the journey was worth it. This book is brutal. If you are sensitive at all to suffering- be it human, animal, generational, cultural- turn away now and do not look back. Four Blackfeet men engage in a bit of last-minute less-than-legal Elk hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving. What happens that day never really leaves them, but what they left behind comes rocketing back into their lives 10 years later. The 10 years since that day have not been easy; the men are plagued by […]

Read it, like a child, into the night

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

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Helen Franklin is an English ex-pat in Prague on a mission to penalize herself for a mysterious past. However she cannot avoid the friendship of Karel and Thea and for a while she is almost happy. Then Melmoth appears. Melmoth is the an old tale of the wanderer, the one who is there to witness when no one else is and what she sees is the depravity, the loss the despair. Melmoth is just a myth, or so it seems until Karel gets a letter […]

A collection of minor disappointments.

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The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams (3 stars) I read this close enough to 20 years ago for me not to want to think too long on it. I was a teenager, and deeply enraptured by fantasy – particularly the weighty tomes that couldn’t quite fit in my back pocket. The kind of books that resonated with a heavy thud when dropped onto a table. The kind of books that probably exacerbated my natural awkwardness around girls. I devoured this book, and its sequels. So, […]

Both Perfect and Not Enough …

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Bingo Square: Underrepresented This trilogy seemed to be very popular around the time I started getting into YA and dystopian novels but despite the positive reviews, I never got around to it. I think I was worried about overdoing it and burning myself out but I always meant to get around to the trilogy.  It’s just other, newer books kept coming up.  I finally downloaded it this year, but was trying to push myself to work through earlier downloads, so I still hadn’t started it […]



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