Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About booktrovert

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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:

Not with a bang, but a whimper

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

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One of the most frightening things about the idea of a home invasion is the vast unknown of what the intruders want. Why would they come into your home – are the seeking violence? Money? Revenge? If our safety can be so easily upturned, we yearn desperately to be able to compartmentalize and thus counter-attack – what can we offer to restore our equilibrium? In Paul Tremblay’s version of a home-invasion, the reader is invited to consider these questions along with the characters. Would we offer […]

“A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing.”

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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Do you want another review of Demon Copperhead? I know we already have plenty of them on this site, and you can throw a stone on the web and hit 20 different reviews – this book is insanely popular right now – so there’s no argument about NEEDING another review. Well, here’s one more – I’ll try not to repeat but as fellow writers-of-reviews, you know how tricky that can be with such a popular novel. Things you probably already know: the novel is a […]

“How do we even begin to understand that there’s more than what we can see?”

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

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I had high hopes for this one, based on my love of The House in the Cerulean Sea. That book was so pure and good, much like a Becky Chambers novel. It was sweet and funny and romantic, with plot that moved at a perfect pace. The love story at the heart of that novel felt so true, it was impossible not to root for. Those charming children, so inventive, earned each of their character arcs. It was wholesome without being syrupy. This is the genius […]

Two Books, One Author: An Eleanor Catton Review

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

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I read good things about Birnam Wood, and so I put it on my library queue – and realized I had not read her earlier, Booker-winning novel, The Luminaries. I put both on my queue, and both arrived near-ish to each other. Both were ALSO nearly (and now just slightly) about to be overdue at the same time, so I read them back-to-back, in order to return them without too much strain on the library borrowing system.  Despite the fact that these are very different books, I […]

“We meet people, they will transform us.”

Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe

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I loved this book. Toya Wolfe did an amazing job creating a vivid world in this coming-of-age story set in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago in the 1990s. This was the era in which many public housing projects were being torn down, and this story is told within that context of fear and uncertainty. (I had watched The Pruitt-Igoe Myth years ago and it’s just a wonderful documentary if you want a depiction of the complexities of urban housing post WWII and the use […]

One way to deal with sexism in your office

Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

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  CBR15 Passport – set in Japan Shibata is a lonely office worker, doing a rather forgettable job for a paper products company. In her office – and maybe in yours, too – she’s one of the only women, and so in addition to her job she is also expected to do tasks such as bring snacks to her colleagues when vendors gift them to the office, provide coffee at meetings and also clean the cups after meetings. One day, tired of being called “Cup?”, […]



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