Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I’m not the audience. Are you?

Magical Beatdown, Vol 1 by Jenn Woodall

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I think it is time to either pause or cancel my Silver Sprocket subscription. I had gotten several books that I enjoyed and never would have read otherwise if it hadn’t been for this subscription. But in a recent shipment I had nothing but disappointing reads. The first I read was Magical Beatdown, Vol 1 by Jenn Woodall. It is a short zine that is created with light (almost faded, but still popping) blue and pink colors, quickly drawn looking lines and is overly simplified. […]

Yellowface: what a wild ride

Yellowface by RF Kuang

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mood music: t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l – willow smith This book was a wild ride. I had a very love-hate relationship with it, and it took time to finish because of this. A social commentary about the literary publishing world, it tackles issues with diversity and inclusivity and how minority writers are boxed into specific genres by their publishing companies in service of diversifying the signed authors. The story follows June Haywayd, a young […]

Keeping some hope alive

Hooky, vols. 1-2 by Miriam Bonastre Tur

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One of the cardinal sins of any kind of story for me is to be misleading in terms of the general tone and approach it takes. For example, there’s this one anime series I watched years ago (I don’t even remember the title now) that was mostly a lighthearted cute series about the relationship between a boy and this mysterious robot girl he finds. Then suddenly, two episodes from the end it turned completely dystopic, dark, and tragic and pointless. I hated that and it […]

Hands-Down My Favorite TITLE of 2022

Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis by Grace E. Lavery

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Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis Let that title sink in. It’s so great! Also great: hearing Grace Lavery say it aloud herself. If you have any interest in diving into this piece (and holy moly, you should!) I HIGHLY recommend listening to the audio performance- and I do mean performance! Grace, Danny Lavery, and Marc Vietor do not skimp on the drama and pomp. Grace, in particular, has a lovely elastic and elegant lilt- cliché of clichés, but I do think I […]

A few slow moments but overall worth pushing through

The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk

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BINGO – Free (picked up from my local library) Beatrice Clayborn must get married. She must. Getting married is the only way to save her family from financial ruin. But to get married means that she will have to give up her passion and goals: to become a great mage and the first female mage. Complicating her situation further is Ianthe Lavan, an extremely wealthy, handsome, compassionate man determined to win her hand in marriage, and his sister Ysbeta who wants the same things as […]

The King who brought back partying

A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration by Jenny Uglow

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Charles II is an interesting figure to me, partly because he seems so much more human than the joyless Oliver Cromwell who’d preceded him having lopped Charles’ dad’s head off (also interesting to me, as despite my reading habits I’m actually anti-monarchy) but mostly influenced by the fact that before reading this, pretty much everything I knew about him was gleaned from Horrible Histories (and this song in particular – to be fair, they do a pretty decent job of covering the highlights). Thanks to […]



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