May 2019
MsWas's Message Corner
Greetings Cannonballers,
We’re getting ready for Good Omens #CannonBookClub on Friday, have you been (re)reading? I just finished my reread, and it was great to have David Tennant and Michael Sheen in my head. (Tennant’s my favorite Doctor so it was a bonus!)
I recently changed office buildings, so I’ve found myself reading more on my lunch hour instead of doing the Netflix binge. I’m a big fan of Anne Perry’s Victorian murder mysteries, so I was happy to see that she’s started a new series. Twenty-one Days focuses on Daniel Pitt, the son of Charlotte and Thomas, who kicked off my historical mystery obsession years ago with the The Cater Street Hangman. For more book suggestions from me, see my Quick Questions interview from 2017.
We’re still planning Book Bingo for this summer, so don’t worry if you feel like you’re in a reading slump. This fun game that we began last year really psyched people up and hugely increased the number of reviews on the site. Watch for details on July 1.
Take care and Happy Reading!
MsWas
Q&A with a Cannonballer: Alexis Dubief
How many times have you participated in CBR? Has it changed the way you read?
I was a CBR lurker for ages but officially joined up for CBR6 in 2014. Cannonballers introduced me to romance reading (Malin and Mrs. Julien are largely to blame) and even today, 5-star reviews on CBR account for ~70% of my book purchases. Murderbot Diaries, The Hating Game, Saga, Fangirl, etc.: many of my all time favorites came directly from the rave reviews of other Cannonballers.
#CannonBookClub: Good Omens
It's finally here! The first #CannonBookClub of the year will be this Friday and Saturday, May 17-18, and we are reading Good Omens, the masterpiece by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Check out the discussion questions and start compiling all your data points, you nerds.
And bonus! We're going to follow that up with a Facebook Live event in the group chat June 14-15, discussing the hotly anticipated TV adaptation, which premieres on Amazon on May 31. If you're not already part of the Facebook group, join us!
Hugo Awards
Has your TBR pile been getting a little low? (If so, you're not reading enough CBR reviews...) Then lucky for you the Hugo Awards finalists have been announced! The Hugo Awards cover a lot more than just books; I personally am very much looking forward to checking out all those podcasts.
They also provide a Retrospective of the 1944 Hugo Awards, which has some very familiar names and also tells us that Bedknobs and Broomsticks was based on a novella! Raise your hand if you knew that already.
First CBR11 donation
On Mother’s Day, we made our first donation of CBR11 to the American Cancer Society in memory of AlabamaPink. Thanks to generous contributions from people like you, ad revenue from the site, profits from our merchandise on RedBubble and earnings from our Amazon affiliate links, we’ve been able to give $200 so far this year. Thanks, as always, for all your support!
If you've experienced a problem with your book titles and authors not saving when you publish your post, we apologize. It's a known problem, and our develop is working on it. If you try editing and fixing the missing information and it still won't save, let MsWas know. The bug should be corrected shortly!
Helpful Tip: whitelisting comments
When you comment on someone's review, Wordpress automatically signs you up to receive updates, so you know if someone responds to your comment. However, those updates don't come from the usual Wordpress emails; they're generated from hello@email.gopostmatic.com. If you whitelist that email address or add it to your addressbook, you'll never miss a word from your fellow Cannonballers! Also, double check the email address you have listed in your profile. It can be different than the one you use to log in to the website, so your notifications may be going to a different address (check under "Contact Info").
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May 14, 2019 01:22 am
…to drown out this terrible dialogue. But before we get to that, let’s start with the good. Warning: this post contains ALL the spoilers! The first half of this book is beautiful, moody, and gorgeously written. The marsh is described so lovingly, so well, and the family dynamics felt so authentic. Kya’s transition from little sister with a troubled family to nature child was described with a sort of reverence for Nature that I found compelling. Her relationship with Jumpin’ and Mabel was sweet, and her determined self-reliance was inspiring and heartbreaking. It started off so well, I thought that […]
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May 13, 2019 10:41 pm
The Lying Woods is a quiet YA mystery surrounding a family scandal. Owen has just been pulled out of his fancy boarding school upon the news that his father has left town, taking with him millions of embezzled funds from the fracking company he runs. The company employed most of Owen’s small town, so when Owen is forced to return home and enroll in the public school, he doesn’t have any friends left there – as far as they’re concerned, Owen’s cushy life was lived on their family’s lost pensions and everyone in town is convinced his mother knows more […]
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May 13, 2019 09:08 pm
True West: In a play about two brothers working together on a screenplay, the idea here seems to be to explore not only the ways in which western films are entirely dependent on tropes, but also the ways in which stories that attempt to defy tropes are now full of their own tropes. We start with a brother working on a screenplay in Los Angeles as his older, scumbag, and recently returned from the desert living a life of derelict and affected squalor. As they bicker back and forth about their mother, her house, their father, his drinking, and their […]
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May 13, 2019 05:11 pm
These Scientology books always amaze me. The otherwise totally normal and intelligent people who get sucked into a cult like Scientology, and drag their children along them, will never make sense to me. But that won’t stop me from reading the memoirs of ex-Scientologists. Jenna Miscavige grew up deep in the Scientology organization. Her uncle, David Miscavige, ran the church, and although she didn’t really know him, having the Miscavige name carried a lot of weight. It also carried a lot of expectations — she was separated from her parents at a young age in order to grow up fully […]
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May 13, 2019 02:41 pm
This is an odd book…a kind of novel in stories, but not one in which the stories are particularly connected together in terms of character or voice or plot. Instead they are thematically connected along a few various leitmotifs. One, is boats, ships and other such vessels playing along the the various ways in which boats are used as story elements and metaphors in the Bible. The opening story involves a nonhuman narrator on the Ark. This opens up and elucidates some of the fog regarding the mythos of Noah’s ark and provides a kind of real world explanation for […]
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May 13, 2019 02:35 pm
Like the book I read last year by Robert Coover called The Cat in the Hat for President, this book was recently republished, for more or less obvious reasons. The premise of this book is a kind of Manchurian Candidate meets Citizen Kane in that we have a young senator meeting up with the president on the night of a White House correspondent’s dinner at Camp David. At the meeting the president runs through a list of issues with the current Vice President, including a recent economic scandal and ultimately hints at the idea of this senator being in the […]
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May 13, 2019 02:26 pm
I have a whole bunch of books in my back log that I need to review (another trip!) but I wanted to jump on this one FIRST because REASONS. And they are spoilery reasons, not just for this book but for Endgame. So I’ll do some regular chit-chat first and push all those spoilers down below the jump. Yeah? I love these books more and more and beyond words. The world building is just so complete and I can’t get past how engaging and enthralling it is. Ugh. It’s amazing. The flip side of that coin is that way too much […]
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May 13, 2019 01:59 pm
Spend It! is one in a series of books for kids learning about money. Along with Earn It! and Save It! (and possibly a future title Give It!) the reader finds out that money is not as straight forward as one might think. Cinders McLeod, in this book, talks about understanding your choices when it comes to money. Our bunny hero, Sonny, has three carrots, therefore, that means he can buy three things, right? Wrong! As he quickly learns. (Though you got to love that reasoning!) And, with his mothers help, Sonny figures out what each thing he wants cost/how […]
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May 13, 2019 10:52 am
What is a refugee? We get a simple, but informative, answer to that question in Elise Gravel’s picture book, What Is a Refugee? You find out why people leave their homes, the feelings they have and what could happen to them while trying to find a new home. While not too in-depth, there is much covered. Therefore, this might not be for the very young reader/listener. Yet, due to its format, it is aimed at younger children. Therefore, know your reader and their ability to sit and listen to a not traditionally action filled story. Also, this could be used […]
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Amanda Howard (aka "Bothari43")
The Cannonball Read Newsletter Editor
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