Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

About ElCicco

CBR 4
CBR 5
CBR 6
CBR 7
CBR 8
CBR 9
CBR10 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR14 Bingo Badges
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant
CBR18 Levels

Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

ElCicco's Reviews:

Pirates and Witches and Austen, oh my!

The League of Gentlewomen Witches: Dangerous Damsels Book 2 by India Holton

by 1 Comment

Cbr18bingo Summer (my final book review of astronomical summer, which officially ends September 22, 2026, at 8:05 pm ET) What a delightful way to end summer! This book had me from page one, and the fact that I hadn’t read the first book in the series did not get in the way of enjoying this one. India Holton imagines a Victorian England in which witches and pirates, who are mortal enemies, abound. They are all thieves of some taste and class (depending on who you […]

Not for me

For the Wolf: The Wilderwood Book 1 by Hannah Whitten

by Leave a Comment

Cbr18bingo Middle because I quit in the middle of this one I picked this one up thinking it would be right up my alley. It’s a fantasy novel centered around the Little Red Riding Hood/Big Bad Wolf story, with dark magical woods and so on. Well over 100 pages in, I realized it was not for me for a few reasons, but it might be for you. It might be for me at some later time.  For the Wolf takes place in a cold, landlocked […]

A cozy romance about found family

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches: A Novel by Sangu Mandanna

by Leave a Comment

Cbr18bingo Refuge. The main characters hide away in a mansion, away from prying eyes The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is a novel about misfits and found family. While witches, witchcraft, and persecution are at the center of the story, several other characters have also found themselves on society’s periphery. The question is, is the purpose of life to find ways to survive or is it to find ways to really live? The novel is set in contemporary England and witches are still around. […]

Is it a “hilarious satire” OR is it a middling white guy’s rant against contemporary social norms

My Inner Child Wants to Kill: A Mindful Murder Novel by Karsten Dusse

by 2 Comments

Cbr18bingo Or My Inner Child Wants to Kill is apparently book 2 in the Mindful Murder series by German author Karsten Dusse, with the first book having been turned into a Netflix series. I did not know any of that when I picked this one up at the library and I have no interest whatsoever in delving further into any of it. In a weird way, this book reminded me of my experience with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — white guys writing about […]

“Praise then darkness and creation unfinished”

The Left Hand of Darkness: A Novel by Ursula K. Le Guin

by 3 Comments

Cbr18bingo Left The Left Hand of Darkness is a Hugo and Nebula award winning novel first published in 1969. It is the story of an alien envoy named Genly Ai who has come to a remote planet called Gethen or Winter in order to speak to its leaders about joining the Ekumen, a kind of alliance of other worlds devoted to the service and betterment of humanity. Genly has arrived at a time when the nations of this planet are on the verge of war, […]

“…looking back at those pages, I shivered to see our plunge into darkness, day by day, without realizing it was a spiral, and its nadir, the abyss.”

The Year of the Wind: A Novel by Karina Pacheco Medrano

by 2 Comments

Cbr18bingo Sheep. Sheep and other livestock are mentioned throughout the novel and sheep feature prominently in a particularly important scene Earlier in the year I reviewed Rabih Alameddine’s brilliant novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) and one of the things I noted in my review is that the narrator, who is a few years older than I am, describes growing up in Lebanon and Beirut in the 1970s/80s. I was in high school and college at that time, and […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo