Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Sylvia did reach her dream of becoming a ballerina. And it all started with one determined girl with one library book from one bookmobile.”

Ready to Fly: How Sylvia Townsend Became The Bookmobile Ballerina by Lea Lyon & A. LaFaye, Illustrations by Jessica Gibson

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We’re gonna start off today’s review by (potentially? I don’t think I’ve talked about this here before) learning a new thing about NTE: I used to be a dancer. Before my body decided that anything that required even standing was completely out of the question (so from age 3-15, basically), being a dancer was a major part of my identity. I danced five days a week – tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, & pointe. Pointe was – by far – my worst class (I had […]

So, Do You Like Knives?

The Martial Arts of Indonesia: A Guide to Pencak Silat, Kuntao and Traditional Weapons by Donn F. Draeger

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  Yes, I am really amusing myself here for picking a ‘sportsball’ book where balls don’t really feature in the sports of focus. To make up for that though—as I discovered—nearly everything else that you could think of has been used as a weapon in an Indonesian martial art at some point. This includes knives, more knives, swords, shields, sticks, more knives, whips, chains, and teeth. And the knives? More knives than spam in Monty Python. Some of these people folks really love their knives. […]

“Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that’s always too small.”

Björnstad (Beartown) by Fredrick Backman

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CBR13 Bingo: Sports Ball (could easily also be used as Rec’d, since a lot of Cannonballers have read and reviewed it favourably) Official book description: People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better […]

The World Was Not Enough

It's Better To Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: sportsball On February 3, 2002, I sat on my dad’s couch in Maryland to watch the Super Bowl. Usually, we had a party but this year, no one really felt like partying. We had just gotten back from a weekend trip to Columbus, Ohio and we were both tired. We tuned into the game, promising to root for the underdog Patriots against the highly favored, turbocharged St. Louis Rams even though we anticipated it’d be a rout. On February 3, 2019, […]

Got my boogie shoes on and ready to go!

Dance Class Volume 12: The New Girl by BeKa

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The first thing I noticed in my copy of Dance Class Volume 12: The New Girl by BeKa was that several speaking bubbles were empty. I can only assume that this is due to reading this as an e-galley directly from the publisher’s newsletter and therefore, not a finished copy. Because of this, I was not overly thrilled with the plot. However, the 3 comes from the potential of what I was able to read. I think reading the previous volumes of the series would […]

For Three!

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Vera Kelly Is Not A Mystery by Rosalie Knecht

Never Easy, Never Pretty: A Fan, A Team, A Championship Season by Dean Bartoli Smith

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Knocked out three books this weekend, all of which I enjoyed to varying degrees…   The Book of Three A cute, charming fantasy novel. Perhaps a little too derivative of LOTR (the wolf-like character might as well have been called “Gollum”) but still entertaining and occasionally refreshing when compared to the rest of the genre. I also enjoyed a compelling female character that had autonomy without having to be everyone’s Hashtag Badass Woman (in other words: I appreciate a male writer who can write a […]



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