Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fantastic Fantasy!

Faebound by Saara El-Arifi

by Leave a Comment

Saara El-Arifi immediately place herself on my auto-buy list with her debut, and this new world she’s created just confirms why I love her storytelling. The book starts with a myth telling of the three gods: Asase, the Wheat, god of the earth and creator of humans; Ewia, the two-headed Bat, god of the sun and creator of fae: and Bosome, the Water, god of the moon and creator of the elves. As far as anyone is aware, all that remains in the world are […]

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind small

Zanzara by Gloria Vitanza Basile

by 2 Comments

Born in poverty and raised in a squalid orphanage, Phaedra’s life transforms completely when her identity as a prince’s illegitimate daughter is revealed, vaunting her into the lap of luxury. But she has a long, tough path to tread still before she will reach her happy ending. I really, really love the crazy bloody bodice rippers of the 1970s and 80s. They are always wild and adventurous, often with a strong historical grounding, and take you careening through the kind of heroine’s journey that leave […]

“Welcome to the future! The future stinks.” (Your Pal Fred)

Your Pal Fred Volume One by Michael Rex

Doom’s Day Camp V02 The Story Eater by Joshua Hauke

by Leave a Comment

I had an odd reading arc at the end of 2023. I  found some not overly happy books. One was a book about Palestine and Gaza, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, and  two books about the apocalypse. Not to mention the teen novel about a “camp” to train teenage assassins. However, there was humor in the two apocalypse books. In Your Pal Fred Volume One, Michael Rex made a character that is from the past. He wakes up in the seriously dystopian world of […]

Just Walk Forward

Last Flight by Kristen Mai Giang

by Leave a Comment

From Publisher Description of Last Flight by Kristen Mai Giang: On April 24, 1975 the last flight out of Saigon, Vietnam carried over 400 people to the United States, six days before Saigon’s surrender to the North Vietnamese Army.  I was a few months old in April, therefore, I obviously have no memory of this happening. However, when I learned that the war was still basically going and I was alive for it, it was an eye opener. I had always heard about the Vietnam […]

Ducking ducks and Women in Pants!

Mr. McCloskey’s Marvelous Mallards: The Making of Make Way for Ducklings by Emma Bland Smith

Cloaked in Courage: Uncovering Deborah Sampson, Patriot Soldier by Beth Anderson

by Leave a Comment

This tale by Emma Bland Smith is the one that imagines how things went when Robert McCloskey decided to write Make Way For Ducklings. Their take is a bit poetic license I am sure, however Mr. McCloskey’s Marvelous Mallards: The Making of Make Way for Ducklings, is a fun way to see how one of his most famous works was made. From real ducklings to full grown ducks; from editors not willing to take the “okay” and from his own need to have things perfect, […]

CBR15 Bingo: Politics

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

by Leave a Comment

4.5 stars CBR15 Bingo: Politics (the word is used 18 times over the course of the novel) Official book description: It isn’t much of an island that rises up one moonless night from the depths of the Circle Sea — just a few square miles of silt and some old ruins. Unfortunately, the historically disputed lump of land called Leshp is once again floating directly between Ankh-Morpork and the city of Al-Khali on the coast of Klatch — which is spark enough to ignite that […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo