Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“No, I mean, it’s all in pieces.” “Yes. So are we all.”

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

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Light from Uncommon Stars is both entirely typical of my reading (characters going through it, romance main or subplots, coming to terms with one’s choices, a commitment to reading trans and non-binary authors) but also feels quite a bit outside my comfort zone. I had initially put this book on my to read list because of the 2023 Read Harder tasks asking us to read a book about a trans character by a trans author and a book from the Ignyte Awards. Then my 2023 […]

Yvonne Names Three Reasons, But There’s More

Three Reasons To Run (Weddings with the Moks #2) by Jackie Lau

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Oh yes, this is what I’m looking for in a Jackie Lau book. When I received my ARC copy of Three Reasons to Run, I immediately picked up a copy of the first in the series, Four Weddings to Fall in Love to introduce me to the world that Lau would be working in within her larger Toronto-verse. While it was an enjoyable read, it wasn’t the strongest Lau. But I shouldn’t have worried, Three Reasons to Run is a crisp, warm, emotionally resonant book […]

“Rome was built on the blood of Remus; the Republic was born from the death of Lucretia; the Empire grew from the assassination of Caesar.”

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon

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Last fall the internet discovered that, apparently, men think about the Roman Empire a lot. While the Roman Empire wasn’t my “Roman Empire” (I honestly don’t know that I have one), it did spark a bit of curiosity about the actual Roman Empire, being an area in history that I haven’t given much study. Cue two reviews of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon by friends the same week in January and I had […]

“Because I know the day you come here to tell me that she’s dead will be the worst day of my life.”

Green River Killer: A True Detective Story by Jeff Jensen (Writer), Jonathan Case (Illustrator)

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Reading Doomed sparked a push for more true crime reading and I hit up my TBR and put in a slew of library requests. First in was another Read Harder choice, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case. Before this year I was unfamiliar with the existence of this book, or the decades long investigation it chronicles. But such is the reward of hitting up library lists for challenges, particularly banned books. (The challenge task was specifically banned comics […]

“What I say is that I am innocent… I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian…”

Doomed: Sacco, Vanzetti, & the End of the American Dream by John Florio and Ouisie Shapiro

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The Read Harder Challenge strikes again. Task 15 for this year was to read a YA non-fiction work, and that is an area of my to read list that is stunningly small. I thought I had a book picked out, but it turned out to not be YA (but, The Art and Life of HIlma af Klint was still an enjoyable read).  I went back to the Arlington, VA Public library list of books you might have missed in 2023 to produce some additional ideas […]

My First Manga… Ever

My Special One, Volume 1 by Momoko Koda

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The Read Harder Challenge is living up to its name this year for me… pushing me out of my comfort zones and into areas I have not read in a long time or in the case of My Special One at all. My sister read manga when we were growing up and I just never saw the allure (it probably had a lot to do with my lack of reading comics, something she also did). The task was specifically to read a manga or manhwa […]



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