Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Nightmares of the Fourth Reich

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

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Without a doubt, the best thing I’ve read so far this year. Quarter of the way through and not much comes close. As I’ve said many times, I don’t like dystopias that lean too hard into the dystopic-aspect. I like them with the axis of earth just tilted slightly; looking at reality through a cracked mirror. In other words, take scary parts of society and bend them a little to suit your story. Laila Lalami more than delivers that here. What’s frightening about The Dream Hotel is […]

Sparks in the Wind

Sunrise On The Reaping by Suzanne Collins

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Readers of the Hunger Games are familiar with Haymitch, the drunken mentor of Katniss and Peeta, and with how he won his Games, and what happened afterward – but not all is as it seems on the big screen. I love The Hunger Games series, and I really enjoyed The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, so even though I am not as interested in Haymitch’s Games as many other fans are, I was still incredibly excited when this book was announced, not only for the chance […]

A very sweet adventure story, gorgeously packaged

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

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4.5 stars Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Celestial (there is a big moon and several stars on the cover) What if in The Princess Bride, Buttercup didn’t sit at home and mourn for Westley when he was captured by pirates, but instead went off to try to rescue him? Of course, that would mean Buttercup had any agency at all in either the novel or the film, and she really doesn’t. But if Buttercup was a young woman named Tress, from a barren and fairly desolate […]

Slightly out of place, in every way

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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I saw a recommendation for Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, and I got it from the interlibrary loan in amongst some verrrrryyyy long books (Why does nobody edit Brandon Sanderson?!?). I couldn’t contemplate bringing a 5lb book on the plane, so grabbed Bradley’s novel thinking it was the right length for a 3 day work trip. What happened, in the end, was me having to caution myself to slow down so I would have enough book to last the whole trip – this funny, […]

Horribly Fun

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Tchaikovsky has a knack for making humans supporting actors in his space-faring opera about intelligent animal life. After reading Children of Time, which I enjoyed, I wasn’t sure how he would do a second book about a different species in a fresh way. But this second book is just as good as the first. Told in a similar way to Children of Time, Children of Ruin switches between the past and present. The past being a time when human civilization has basically self-destructed and sent […]

Dogs are purest good boys, even in Animorphs

Megamorphs #1: The Andalite’s Gift by K. A. Applegate

The Alien by K. A. Applegate

The Secret by K. A. Applegate

The Android by K. A. Applegate

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Oops, I forgot to review my books! I am still chugging along in The Animorphs series! I fell off of it briefly but am catching back up. I was going to skip some volumes, but it turns out my brain is too COMPLETEST for that, so at this point I’ve read the first ten books, plus the first Megamorphs volume. Megamorphs #1: The Andalite’s Gift: Megamorphs is sort of the “super specials” of the series (shoutout to my BSC babes). Those are an ensemble narrative, […]



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