Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Definitely a Whole New World

The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah

by Leave a Comment

bcr16bingo rings As a child, and an early reader, I was totally hooked on fairy tales, especially the more obscure ones from Andrew Lang.  I loved his “color” collections – the Red Fairy Tale Book, the Purple Fairy Tale Book, the (I kid you not) Olive Fairy Tale Book.  There were so many of them but never enough.  Then later on, I branched out to fairy tale-adjacent, such as Bullfinch’s Mythology, and the Ricard Burton collection of the Arabian Nights.  So I had some knowledge […]

Not your mother’s book club

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

by Leave a Comment

My first time reading a Grady Hendrix novel, I did not realize he was the same author who wrote My Best Friend’s Exorcism and The Final Girl Support Group –  I imagine I will enjoy both of those novels as I quite liked this one. It gave me the same feeling as those first few seasons of True Blood, southern camp at its finest. Think Steel Magnolias, but with an added twist of body horror. Set during the late 80s and early 90s in South […]

Who the Heck is Mira?

Mira's Last Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

by Leave a Comment

First of all, this is the fourth book in Ms. Bujold’s Penric and Desdemona series. I was bewildered by the format. It’s a small book, barely 150 pages, 8 chapters, and written in very large type. I wondered if it was a YA novel, but when I read the cover, I saw it was “a fantasy novella.” Why she didn’t consolidate the six stories into two normal-sized novels, I don’t know. Possibly because each story is separate and independent. Whatever the format, this is typical […]

Penric to the Rescue

Penric's Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold

by 1 Comment

One of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, has written a series of novellas about Penric and Desdemona, a wizard and a demon who help people needing the services of wizards and demons. Penric, tall, handsome, and charming, is just what a young widow named Nikys needs when her brother, General Adelis is accused of treason and blinded by boiling vinegar. Penric, an secret sorcerer and physician, posed as a simple courier when he provided the documents showing Adelis had sought employment in a neighboring […]

A Fun Romance/Mystery, Perfect for the Beach or the Airport

Hello, Summer by Mary Kay Andrews

by 2 Comments

I am someone who is very sensitive to the formatting and trim size of a novel, so I think a lot of my enjoyment in this novel was partially related to how much I liked the mass market formatting they used. A couple of years ago a lot of publishing companies switched to this taller, skinnier format that doesn’t work well with my hands, but the edition I got at the airport of this book was a more squat square format that was perfect. And […]

Revelator: Sometimes God is One of Us

Revelator: A Novel by Daryl Gregory

by 3 Comments

To risk starting out on an annoyingly pretentious foot, Daryl Gregory is an author I liked before he was cool. I’d been enjoying his work before he broke out into the front tables of bookstores with Spoonbenders, and I feel an affection for his writing and the interesting things he does within the horror/fantasy field. I find him to be a writer like Robert Charles Wilson, a sure-footed storyteller whose name on the cover of a genre novel guarantees an interesting and fast moving read. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo