Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you.”

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

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Never have truer words been spoken! This collection of short stories crept around my periphery for some time, and I am both overjoyed to have finally given in to it and disappointed in myself for not biting earlier. I came across it originally on a list of fairy-tale retellings on Autostraddle, and when it popped up again in the employee recommendations section of one of my favorite booksellers (Crow Bookshop in Burlington, what’s up!) I knew that it was meant to be. Still, it sat […]

familiar fables

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

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Familiar stories are passed, one by one, from one storyteller to another. There are thirteen tales in Kissing the Witch; some will be immediately recognizable, some will require you to dust off your mental library, and some are fantastically new- conjured from collective memory and superstition but new none the less. Each tale is handed off from teller to teller; frequently the perceived villain will be the heroine of the following story. Most are, to quote Emmylou Harris, “full of heartbreak and desire”. She sings that […]

Short reads to finish off my reading year (and help me to finally complete my double Cannonball)

Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen

The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedgwick

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

A Second-Chance Road Trip for Christmas by Jackie Lau

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Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen Rating: 4 stars In this novella which concludes Kelly Bowen’s The Devils of Dover series, we finally find out more about the mysterious King, who has been popping up in Bowen’s books for a long time. A shadowy London crime lord with connections to smuggling, art forgery, theft and all sorts of other untoward business, he is not a man to cross. He discovers that a man he believed to be dead, a man who ruined his childhood and set him […]

Mysterious as the dark side of the Moon

The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan by Sherry Thomas

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Official book description: CHINA, 484 A.D. A Warrior in Disguise: All her life, Mulan has trained for one purpose: to win the duel that every generation in her family must fight. If she prevails, she can reunite a pair of priceless heirloom swords separated decades earlier, and avenge her father, who was paralyzed in his own duel. Then a messenger from the Emperor arrives, demanding that all families send one soldier to fight the Rouran invaders in the north. Mulan’s father cannot go. Her brother […]

“I try not to expect people to be who I wish them to be, rather than who they are.” (Bingo #2)

A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2) by Sherry Thomas

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In setting up the prompts for our Sherlock Retellings Book Club I realized one of the parameters I use when deciding if something is a good retelling or remix: a good retelling for its own sake, needs to have enough of the original’s connective tissue without feeling like it’s been made using tracing paper. In the Lady Sherlock series Sherry Thomas split the various characteristics across several characters and I think it worked really well to not have direct analogs for the most part. Its […]

Retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

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Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.  So this was really good. I like a good retelling and Craig does a great job with “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” by the Brothers Grimm. We follow the main character Annaleigh who is intent on figuring out if her older sister was murdered. From there we have Craig work in Gothic elements as well as some pretty dark horror elements as well. I loved the world building and would […]



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