Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Fairytale Romance

The Scarlet Circus by Jane Yolen

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In this collection of eleven short stories, the reader encounters love in its myriad forms – romance, but familial love and friendship and love of duty too – all splashed with plenty of fantasy. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I did not recognize Jane Yolen right away – she has written over four hundred books, and it turns out that though I have not read any of them, I knew plenty of them. Anyway I have rectified that sad oversight with The […]

Queen of the Nile

Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth by Francine Prose

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Francine Prose tells the story of Cleopatra (VII Philopater, if you want to be specific), her entanglement with the Roman Empire, and how she has become distorted in cultural depictions after her death. In a way, I am reading this book in preparation – I’ve got the reading of a retelling of Cleopatra’s life set in space (!) coming up, and I figured that I’d appreciate it more if I gave myself a better grounding of the historical subject matter first. Also, I’ve always found […]

This review is coming to you from a real life dystopia

Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake by Mazey Eddings

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I am writing to you from the inside of an actual, non-fiction dystopia. The spoilers start now. I never liked the evil ex trope, and I particularly disliked the evil ex had an abortion variation. I used to come across it frequently in the late 1980s – 1990s. I haven’t seen much of it recently and I’m not at all happy about coming across it in Mazey Edding’s Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake. The book isn’t explicitly anti-abortion, and I have no idea which side Eddings […]

Ornery Agatha Cat Christie

Dead and Gondola by Ann Claire

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Ellie and her sister Meg are the latest managers of their family-owned bookstore. When an employee disappears and a mysterious visitor ends up dead in a gondola, the Christies find themselves entangled in the mystery. My losing streak had apparently ended, because I adored this book! It had all the best traits of a cozy mystery – quirky characters, a small town feel, adorable animals – without going overboard, which is a real hazard in this genre. The Christies are a fun, close-knit family, bookstore […]

A Flash in the Pan

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

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CBR 14 Bingo: Font I do like that dripping red font, like it’s been chalked on. Also Lydia is a font of misery. Lydia is a vampire – has been all her life, since her mother turned her as an infant. Now she’s living on her own for the first time, and having trouble tracking down blood. Though I did not know there was a term for them, I have long been aware of the Sad, Strange, Miserable Women that populate the modern literary landscape. […]

The urgent truth of our history is all around us if we choose to listen.

We’ve Got to Try by Beto O’Rourke

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When I saw the title of Beto O’Rourke’s new book, We’ve Got to Try, I thought, “yes, exactly! What are we trying?” We are trying to save democracy by rescuing voting rights from people who want to suppress it. That’s important, right? I think it’s important. I think it’s important to try and keep trying especially when success isn’t guaranteed. In We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible, O’Rourke is telling the stories of the people who fought […]



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