Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Evil Lives! by R.L. Stine

The Evil Lives! by R.L. Stine

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Well this was a wild ride. I do think that since Stine did not revisit this series for a bit, things got wonky here in terms of continuity errors that I was going, what the world about. All of them were concerning Sarah Fear that we learned about in the Fear Street Cheerleaders trilogy. I don’t know why Stine did this, maybe to have a new spin on things. But it didn’t work because I still own all of the Fear Street Cheerleader books so […]

Goodnight Kiss by R.L. Stine

Goodnight Kiss by R.L. Stine

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Heh. I needed to find something that began with the letter “G” for a bingo book game I am playing. And honestly. I thought this took place in school (it’s been decades since I read this one!) and then realized well at least it fits the “G” part since the whole book took place over the summer holiday. Do you all remember the “Fear Street Super Chiller” books? It was similar to the “The Baby-sitter Club’s Super Specials”? All I can tell you is that […]

Surviving middle school is hard

Just Beyond #1 The Scare School by R.L. Stine, Nichole Matthews and Kelly Matthews

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R.L. Stine, Nichole Matthews and Kelly Matthews adapted Just Beyond #1 The Scare School into a graphic novel format. Or I am assuming it was a novel first, then a graphic novel. However, regardless of which came first (or didn’t come out) this is an old school RL Stine story. The theme is classic: We start with a couple of kids in “unusual clothing” (cue the “not from our world”) and how they are being chased by a robotic monster. We then see who lives […]

Old Hollywood Movie Magic Comes Alive, really!

Just Beyond: Monstrosity  by R. L. Stine

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Goosebumps meets Alfred Hitchcock meets the Scooby Gang meets family drama in Just Beyond: Monstrosity by R. L. Stine, Irene Flores and Joana Lafuente. This is a fun story of a brother and sister (Ruthie and Ezra Dillon) whose father and uncle have purchased an old horror movie studio. But strange occurrences are happening and the hauntings might be more than just movie magic. Split between the point of view of Now and the original 1950s studio (but mostly now) this is a cute, little spooky, graphic novel for […]

You won’t have to write a book report on these

Who Is R. L. Stine by M.D. Payne

Who Was Maurice Sendak by Janet B. Pascal

Who Was Ernest Hemingway by Jim Gigliotti

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I know some are familiar with the Who Are/Who Was series? And, I have written abut them before, so saying they are books about a subject (person for the Who Are/Was, place or thing for the What Is/What Was), and they have realistic, black and white illustrations that are not necessarily “fantastic” but get the point across and there is a double timeline at the end (for the subject, in this case  three authors, and the world timeline) is redundant. But needed as an intro […]

Shorts

The Didomenico Fragment by Amor Towles

The Gentlemen from Peru by Andre Aciman

On Blueberry Hill by Sebastian Berry

Good Enemy by Yilong Liu

The Snowman by R.L. Stine

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

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The Didomenico Fragment This story by Amor Towles takes place all in New York City, with Brooklyn being posed almost as a foreign country. The narrator is an aging art critic and scholar who was recently in possession of a small fragment of a Renaissance masterpiece. He’s approached by an art dealer who asks him about selling the fragment, but he laments that he sold it years ago. This leads to an idea. Early in the story he talks about how being retired, even comfortably, […]



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