Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I'm a special education teacher by day and a reader by most other hours. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Booktrovert's Quick Questions interview.)

booktrovert's Reviews:

There’s no place like home

A House Between The Earth and the Moon by Rebecca Scherm

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This is the second novel I’ve read recently about traveling to space in the near future to escape climate disaster here on Earth – the last one was a series of short stories with a more terrestrial bent generally. In this novel, there are again casual mentions of pandemics plural, and more – the things that we are always afraid of in the news cycle. Mass shootings, intense weather events that drive people away from their homes, and increasingly more seamless integration of technology into […]

Thought provoking stories

How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

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This was a really interesting novel told through stories – not nearly as madcap as A Visit From the Goon Squad but a similar idea / form. The establishing story reveals the origin of what will be a super bug, a pandemic with horrific consequences. Each subsequent story picks up on a related aspect of the ensuing hundreds (or, in some cases, thousands) of years during and post pandemic. Each story explores something a little different – grief writ large, as the world experiences during a […]

“What redemption there is in being loved: we are always our best selves when loved by another.”

This Must Be The Place by Maggie O'Farrell

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This was a lovely novel. the sort of story that feels very comforting, even as it is at turns heartbreaking. Daniel Sullivan meets Claudette Wells almost on accident, and this is the story of their marriage. He is an American linguist with Irish roots and a penchant for studying abroad. She is a British movie star of immense fame, who tired of her life in the limelight. Both have rather significant pasts before they meet each other at a crossroads in Ireland – but once […]

“All stories end the same way, don’t they.”

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

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This book was heartbreaking and beautiful, just as you might assume a finalist for the National Book Award would be. It was an incredibly well written story about love and friendship, told across decades. One story line takes place starting in 1985, when a group of men – friends and lovers in Boystown in Chicago – are creating their own memorial service for their friend, Nico – the first death from AIDS that has hit this small community (but not, unfortunately, the last). The other […]

“… slipping through loopholes, unaware of when the axe may fall.”

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell

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Maggie O’Farrell is a gifted writer – and someone who has been quite lucky to evade death on multiple occasions. In this memoir, O’Farrell takes 17 incidents where she or her children come close death – through anaphylaxis, encephalitis, rash decisions made in youth or even  later, as a parent. She explores how each occasion gave her insight into her own mortality, and what it meant for her as a person. When she wrote this book, she was around the age I am now, in […]

How do you judge the virtues of a book?

Verity by Colleen Hoover

It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

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This book brings to mind the concept of “trash relativism” – the idea that while some books have greater literary merit (better writing, depth of themes, strong character development, etc) not everyone reads books for those literary reasons. A lot of people read just to escape, or share in a minor distraction with mild entertainment, and the quality of the writing just isn’t that important. And those are really valuable reasons to read a book. It feels relevant to bring this up in a discussion […]



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