Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Finding family

On the Move: Home Is Where You Find It by Michael Rosen

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A rating of 3 makes this seem like it On the Move: Home Is Where You Find It is not a good book/collection. However, this rating is because of the images of Quentin Blake, which I am not a fan of. However, they are perfect for the atmosphere of the writing (raw, desolate, almost hopeless) and since t there are no half points, this is a 3.5 lower 4. The idea of migration, refugees, immigrants, all come together while we follow Michael Rosen finding out about […]

“Their own words are their best memorial:” Civilian Casualties of WWII

Leningrad by Anna Reid

In the Ruins of the Reich by Douglas Botting

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Both of these books illuminate the impact of cataclysmic war on the civilian population, which is an angle I personally find much more compelling than straight military history. I am way more interested in the individual experience and the repercussions of what we in America tend to view of the last good war, or the war in which we foreground ourselves as heroes. These books both complicate that picture and ask the reader to face the consequences of war. Books that deal with the immediate […]

No Code Breaking Necessary to Enjoy this One

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

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This historical fiction is about women code breakers at Bletchley Park (Officially the Government Code and Cypher School) during WWII. The three main characters, Mab, Osla and Beth are thrown together through Mab and Isla’s arrival at Bletchley Park. Mab is from Shoreditch. She is unabashedly clawing her way out of poverty and aiming toward stability and a better life by marrying up (so to speak). Osla is a socialite, of Canadian birth but English at heart. She has stayed in London to help with […]

Emotional Historical YA

Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken by Nita Tyndall

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Yup, I cried, but no one is surprised. Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken is a story of resistance and making joy during dark times, as well as family and love. It is a story that examines when safety stops being enough and it’s time to resist and push back against harmful regimes. It is also the story of a group of friends navigating their friendship and society when it’s not safe to be Jewish, it’s not safe to be queer, it’s not safe to be […]

The Three S-s: spooky, sad, and a little bit sexy

The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel

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Honestly, what else could you need? If you are our Heroine Leigh Wells, you need quite a bit. You’ve been called back to your ancestral island home, far flung from the wild shores of Scotland. World War Two did not hit your home directly, but it stole many young men and sent very few back home. The few that returned are not who they once were. The island is not what it once was. The Sluagh (sloo-ah) still return every October, but every year they […]

Write and remember

Daughters of the Occupation: A Novel of WWII by Shelly Sanders

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Daughters of the Occupation, published this year, is “inspired by true events” and a real gut-punching piece of historical fiction. Author Shelly Sanders discovered some truths about her family’s past as Jews in Riga when both Soviets and Nazis overran the country and persecuted them. She used this information as a springboard to write a novel about Miriam and Sarah, a grandmother and granddaughter who embark on harrowing journeys in very different time periods to find their family members and preserve their history. Chapters alternate […]



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