Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Maybe a Perfect Book?

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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This is my third reading of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. It is one of my favorite books of the past few years, a book that I find to be nearly perfect. This reread was for Book Club. It is also an extremely prescient time to be reading a book about a global pandemic, but I’m glad that Covid-19 isn’t nearly as devastating as the Georgian Flu. What I was struck with this time through was how Mandel structured the pass-offs between characters. On […]

“Whatever happens, believe that the journey is worth taking, and then you will reach its end.”

Seaward by Susan Cooper

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Cally and Westerly are strangers from opposite ends of the world who are about to be brought together in a place they least expect. Both reeling from grief at losing their parents, they find themselves in a mysterious, magical, and malevolent land that has echoes of their own, but otherwise is beyond imagining. They each have their own shared directive: to find the sea, where their parents implied they could be found. In this land, they meet a majestic, beautiful, and terrifying woman named Tyrannis, […]

How fitting that I’m experiencing reviewing this book again…

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

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It’s strange how CBR makes you realize the thematic similarities between the books you read. This easily could have come from one of the other books I’ve reviewed this year about loss: “No one tells you it’s all about to change, to be taken away. There’s no proximity alert, no indication that you’re standing on the precipice. And maybe that’s what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you’re […]

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” (CBR11 Bingo)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Rosamund Pike (narrator)

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I have absolutely no idea how to review this book. Instead, I’ll tell you the story of my relationship with it. In my sophomore year of high school we read Austen for the first time. I clearly remember our teacher (looking back he was young, with long hair) stalking around the room selling us on an author only some of us had heard of, and attempting to inspire in us the mental fortitude it takes a 15 or 16 year old to really battle with […]

Bingo #3!

Jackaroo or The Tale of Qwyn by Cynthia Voigt

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This was hands-down one of my favorite books growing up, and I happened across my old copy of it when cleaning out my basement. What better way to fill the Youths square than with a trip down memory lane, and I was not disappointed. Jackaroo, or The Tale of Gwyn, as it’s now called, was just as solid and enjoyable today as it was 22 years ago when I bought it (based on its cover) at the scholastic book fair. Gwyn, our main character, is […]

Revisiting the Early Novels of a Long Running Series

An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire

Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire

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While the October Daye series didn’t start clicking for me until the third book, it has since become one of my favorite urban fantasy series.  I love the expansive world building and even thirteen books in, the series keeps growing without conflicting with itself.  I don’t know if McGuire always had this extended world in her head but didn’t know how much time she would have to explore it or if she is going novel to novel on the fly, but it has been such […]



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