Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

by Leave a Comment

The Crow Road is about about Prentice McHoan’s preoccupation with death, sex, his relationship with his father, unrequited love, sibling rivalry, a missing uncle, cars, alcohol and other intoxicants, and God, against the background of the Scottish landscape. And doesn’t that just sound like so much fun? Or maybe just a Scottish take off on Nine’s “Folies Bergeres” Necrophorus: The trouble with Contini, he’s the king of mediocrities, A second-rate director who believes that he is Socrates. He never makes a “movie” or a “picture?” […]

The One Where the Gang Heads to Scotland

Stone & Sky by Ben Aaronovitch

by 2 Comments

I zipped through the Rivers of London series last summer and loved it. Then while browsing through the library I found the newest book 10! A very merry un-birthday to me! Our old friend Peter Grant is no longer the wide-eyed little copper we first met. He’s grown into the Starling, an apprentice of the Nightingale but definitely a power in his own right. He’s still with his lovely wife, the river Beverly, and with the two year time jump since the last novel the […]

‘The Idea Is, Even if I Do Explode, I’m Only Going to Be a Risk to Sheep’

Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch

by Leave a Comment

Been a while! I can’t believe that we are at now ten books into the Rivers of London series. This is another one of those urban fantasy-slash-detective series that I’ve been enjoying over the years. And like some of the others, Rivers of London has 1) experienced a bit of a gap between novels (three years) and 2) reached a bit of a pivotal point in the over-reaching narrative.  Let’s get the biggest thing out of the way first: Stone and Sky is a Rivers […]

“I subscribe to a theory that answers cannot hide from us forever if we seek them long enough.”

Ink & Sigil by Kevin Hearne

by Leave a Comment

Al is one of five magical scribes in the world, charged with upholding the law between the mortal world and the higher planes where gods and mythical creatures reside. When his latest apprentice turns up dead, he discovers that he may have been trafficking the fae – and as his mentor, it is Al’s duty to make things right. This is the first book in the series, which is a spin-off of Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles. I have not read those books, but Ink and Sigil works […]

A madcap road trip (with zebras)

Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti

by Leave a Comment

3.5 stars Nowhere Books Bingo 25: Book about a road trip or travelling Disclaimer! This was an ARC granted to me from St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley. My opinions are my own. Lydia Hope-Wallace is a wallflower, and perfectly happy to remain so, because she has crippling social anxiety and tends to throw up if forced to interact too much with people outside her immediate family or friends. She’s been secretly writing seditious pamphlets and publishing them anonymously for the past three years, and for […]

Busy Bog Bodies

Broken Ground (Karen Pirie #5) by Val McDermid

by Leave a Comment

In 1944, as World War II is drawing to a close, two men are ordered to destroy army surplus. This includes two motorcycles, shiny and brand-new. The men can’t bring themselves to destroy them, so instead they bury the bikes deep in peat-ground of the Scottish highlands. Years later, the granddaughter of one of the men figures out the location of the bikes and, with the help of a local, they decide to dig them up. They find more than they bargained for; a corpse […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo