Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Silent music for peace

Music and Silence: The Passion and Protest of Pablo Casals by Christy Mihaly

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Music and Silence: The Passion and Protest of Pablo Casals is just a WOW book. It is beautifully written, beautifully illustrated and beautifully presented.  Christy Mihaly and illustrator Mariona Cabassa made this (due mid/later April 2026) book about a person and story I do not think I had ever heard of before. It is more emotional than an action story, but there are events that have the action, too. We see how the power of music can try and topple governments. We see how one […]

Well, at least Lesbian Vampires are Better than an Invisible French Woman

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

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“Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth”   1532 Spain: Maria wants more out of life than to be stuck in her small village, and the combination of her great beauty and wily mind may be the ticket to get her out of there. When all it does is throw her into a man’s world of men’s games played by men’s rules, […]

Roaming pack of dogs and her own worn out memories to keep her company

Land of Mirrors by María Medem,

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Every so often I find myself reading a book that I think I like but am not sure. Land of Mirrors by María Medem, Aleshia Jensen (translator) and Daniela Ortiz (translator) is one of those books. It is a graphic novel, but does not flow necessarily as a “pure” one. There is something “different” about it. It might be because it is translated or it might be because of the almost abstract minimal illustrations. However, whatever the reason this is the most organized piece of […]

The Rain in Spain

April in Spain by John Banville

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Dublin-based pathologist Quirke is vacationing, at the insistence of his psychiatrist wife, on the Spanish coast. It’s the 1950s, and this is still Franco’s Spain, but the city of San Sebastian is sedate and quiet and comfortably warm. Quirke isn’t sure he’s made for vacationing and when he spots a familiar face in the crowd, he can’t help but investigate – because that face belongs to a woman named April Latimer, and April Latimer has been dead for years.  Banville is what one might call […]

“She would build herself a life of plenty. She would force her world to bloom as she’d made the pomegranate tree grow, and Santángel would help her do it. Even if blood watered the soil.”

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

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The Familiar is an atmospheric historical fantasy set in the late 1500s Spain, when the Inquisition was up and running at full power. Our heroine is Luzia Cotado, a scullion in the house of a poor noble family who uses small ancestral magics taught to her by her secretly Jewish family to get through the day: unburning burnt bread, multiplying the potatoes when there wasn’t enough coin at market, heating water, fixing a seam. The plot kicks off when Luzia’s mistress, Doña Valentina, catches her at […]

Just when you think you know everything…

The Girl From Guernica by Karen Robards

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I don’t recall why any longer, but the other day something sent me down a Kindle rabbit hole search for a specific Karen Robards book. There was a point in time when Ms. Robards was an automatic purchase for me – if I saw a new book on the rack at the grocery store or at Barnes & Noble, in the basket it went. Like many authors from the late 90s and early aughts for which I had this habit, she kind of fell off […]



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