Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About allisonata

CBR11 participant

Avid reader and writer in Northern California. Interests range from history to YA to NY Times best-sellers to graphic novels. Trying to decolonize my bookshelf and make sure women get at least equal time.

allisonata's Reviews:

It’s Not Just You, The World is Collapsing

The Trouble With Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time by Brooke Gladstone

by 1 Comment

I idly picked up this slim book—tract? broadside?—at the local bookstore while waiting for my daughter to browse all the new graphic novels. This quick read is probably more potent now than it was upon its original publication in May 2017. The premise: many Americans living in the age of Trump the primary candidate, Trump the Republican nominee, and Trump the President *rightly* feel unmoored from reality. How could we [liberals] so badly misunderstand our fellow Americans? be surprised that our government can be so […]

The Americas Deserved Better Than Guns, Germs, and Steel

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

by 6 Comments

After watching John Leguizamo’s Netflix special Latin History for Morons, I felt a duty to learn more about the Hemisphere in which I live. I started with Mr. Leguizamo’s strongest recommendation: 1491, a 560-page tome with multiple appendices. The author isn’t a historian or archaeologist but a journalist who synthesizes all manner of information and makes it accessible.  The result is so compelling, so dense and riddled with shocks big and small that I suspended my usual speed-reading. Unexamined assumptions that I wasn’t even aware […]

Who Published This Book Half-Finished?

Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children) by Seanan McGuire

by 2 Comments

Coming off the heels of the stupendous Dread Nation, I was pumped for this YA novel. The setup: children travel through magical portals to alternate worlds, only to become distraught upon their return to their tedious old lives. (Postmodern Wonderland or Narnia!) Though this book won all the awards—Hugo, Alex, Locus Nebula—it utterly failed to enchant me. I suppose my heart is a closed door. Or maybe an inky void. Nancy (the sixth most interesting character, maybe) lands at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children […]

In Which Jane Kicks Efficient Ass, Especially the Undead Variety

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

by 2 Comments

Yes, we might be living in the darkest timeline—or the dumbest, hard to tell. But be glad that you’re not our girl Jane, who contends with cruel racism and incompetence while also decapitating hungry “shamblers,” the reanimated corpses of the Gettysburg fallen and any poor soul bitten thereafter. Some years ago, the paddy wagon plucked Jane McKeene from her home at Rose Hill plantation so that she might learn the finer points of combat and decorum at Miss Preston’s, Baltimore’s finest school for Negro girls. […]

Drop-kick That Magic Lamp into Mount Doom

The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin (editors)

by 1 Comment

Short story collections are like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you have to gnaw some nuts and chews to eventually find that chocolate truffle. That said, The Djinn Falls in Love is phenomenal. Six of the twenty-one stories are among the best short stories I have read. Ever. (Jhumpa Lahiri, I’m sorry to report that you’ve been bumped.)  The editors’s international ensemble of authors clearly did their research, populating their confident tales with every manner of djinn, jinn, and genie. Some lie in wait in […]

Maybe Don’t Bind Your Fate to First Hottie You Meet

Smoke & Summons (The Numina Series, Book 1) by Charlie N. Holmberg

by Leave a Comment

I’m choosy in my reading–unless of course the book is free (as this one is, for Amazon Prime members through January). The pretty flaming horse on the cover is Ireth, a powerful being from another plane that can be temporarily summoned into a human vessel. You can probably guess the requirements: good health, no piercings to mar one’s wholeness, a summoning tattoo in an extinct language, and…virginity. (Because it’s YA!) Our human vessel is eighteen year old Sandis, the favorite slave of an underworld kingpin whose gun-toting grafters […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo