Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The fame, the wealth, the surveillance system in her body

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

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I started Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase sometime in early 2025. It took me until March 30, 2025 to read. Not because it was a bad book, necessarily,  but because it was a dense, hard read. There were a lot of descriptions of what was happening (even if it was just trying to get out of bed, let alone the technical parts), cultural references and even the way of speaking that was not what I was used to. The idea of a future where we […]

Rage against the dying of the light

Men Have Called Her Crazy (2024) by Anna Marie Tendler

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Bingo square rage. I think this completes my bingo row, along with fanfic, fiasco, earth day, golden Content note for the book: suicidal ideation, eating disorders, self harm, mental health “Now I’m furious, so angry my whole body feels hot, and I can tell I’m about to cry.” (p. 211) I’m (still) a fan of Tendler’s ex-husband–and I love that this isn’t about him. Well, it’s about him in the sense that he’s the ‘unfaithful husband’ of the narrative, presumably, the shadow that lurks behind […]

It’s a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation.

The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold

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“These hill-folk are ignorant, lord.” “These hill-folk are mine, Pym. Their ignorance is…a shame upon my house. Their continued ignorance anyway,” he amended in fairness. It still made a burden like a mountain. “Is this message so complex? So difficult? ‘You don’t have to kill your children anymore.’ It’s not like we’re asking them all to learn–5-space navigational math.” That had been the plague of Miles’s last Academy semester. “It’s not easy for them,” shrugged Dea. “It’s easy for the central authorities to make the […]

“Why were we taught to fear witches, and not the men who burned them?”

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais

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Bingo 12: Dwelling There’s a probably slightly magically sentient house in this novel, both in the title The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, and in the background as a character, but mostly as a big part of the setting. The magic manor is only one of many many tropes in this novel, to the point where I’m not sure whether this whole novel is full of clichés or it’s actually mildly ironically self-aware. There’s a sisterhood of witches with the leader type (Queenie), the sexy one […]

Cookies for a cause: the best kind

Smash the Pastry-archy by Planned Parenthood

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The Georgia Planned Parenthood was selling these as a fundraiser, and I was more than happy to participate and support! Each recipe is from an Atlanta-area restaurant or bakery. I’ve tried three of the recipes so far. Two are definite keepers (the peanut butter chocolate chip pretzel ones from JC’s Cookies were the best, and the ginger shortbread thumbprint cookies from Banshee were very good), and one I probably won’t make again (the strawberry shortcake ones from Kimball House were an odd consistency). But I’m […]

Anything But

Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo

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What are we doing—we’re constantly holding up the mediocre white man as the standard and then bending to it at the detriment of good ideas, fairness, and equity. Mediocre is a must read. It was inappropriate to yell “Yes!” after every sentence, but that’s how I felt. In some ways, it’s telling you what you already know, but it’s also explaining how deep the problem really is and also affirming that no, it’s not just you. I remember so clearly arguing with my brother when […]



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