Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Allegory of power

Pigeons!: A Fable For Our Times by Marc Chalvin

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If I have one complaint about Pigeons!: A Fable For Our Times by Marc Chalvin (due December 2025, read via an oline reader) is that the people who need to read this book, won’t. This is the commentary about what is happening today. It comes out and tells us how the Dictator will use anything he can to stay in power. It comes out and tells us there are well meaning people, but they are missing a few pieces of the puzzle. And those who […]

The Pharaoh (Female), the Pharaoh (Male), and the Priestess

Neferura by Malayna Evans

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As the daughter of two pharaohs and the sister of another, princess and high priestess Neferura is one of the foremost people in the kingdom. But as her co-regent mother and brother fight for power, she’s just another piece on their board – unless she can manage to break free. In first grade we had a unit about ancient Egypt, where we learned all about how they worshipped cats and pulled brains down through mummies’ noses and invented paper. And of course we learned about […]

We means We

While We the People Is All the People: A Picture Book by Howard W. Reeves and Duncan Tonatiuh

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While We the People Is All the People: A Picture Book talks about an important subject, I did not feel there was anything new or fresh added. Howard W. Reeves knows what they wanted to say and that comes across. They wanted to show how we are a community, that freedoms belong to all, and in a poetic fashion shows how we can accomplish this. But we have heard similar things before. However, the presentation of the illustrations by Duncan Tonatiuh was interesting and did […]

“A poem was pinned under Hoshiar’s picture of young Duleep: “I have been thrown into a far-flung place, had everything, all that I once cherished, my Kingdoms and my very life taken from me. I am now in a foreign place, so far from my people. So far from my homeland.”

The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence by Anita Anand

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A Indian freedom fighter waited more than two decades to exact revenge for the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre which was ordered by the British Raj – but the story is more complicated and less cinematic than it has been often depicted since. At the start of this book, the author notes that as the descendent of Indians, she had to set aside her natural aversion to the British Raj and admiration for Udham Singh to tell the story in as unbiased a way as she could. […]

The Word ‘Turbulent’ Is Bearing a Lot of Weight Here

Bomb Season in Jakarta: A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy by Grant Dooley

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This is yet another book I’ve discovered via listening to ABC’s Conversations.  The subtitle of Bomb Season in Jakarta is A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy, and Grant Dooley is not kidding when he writes this. Back in 2004, Dooley and his family had moved to Indonesia to start a three year stint working at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. This was a few years after the 1999 East Timorese crisis and only two years after the 2002 Bali Bombings, Indonesia’s […]

“You are the queen. You are the queen that Antoinette wanted to be . . .”

Antoinette's Sister by Diana Giovinazzo

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CBR17 Bingo: Black – Behold, the cover. Though her tragic sister Marie Antoinette is better known today, Maria Carolina Charlotte, the queen of Naples, ruled with better success but faced her own share of troubles and tribulations in her years on the throne. The thing with historical fiction is that the story can live or die by the events it’s based on, especially when it follows the life of a historical figure. Luckily, Charlotte is an interesting main character. Though her attitudes toward the monarchy […]



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