Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About chatelaine9

CBR 6
CBR 7
CBR 8
CBR 9
CBR10 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR15 Participant
CBR17 Participant

hate hate hate writing but inexplicably always want to do this Ever optimistic about participation...we'll see. Still love lurking. Y'all are awesome and such a great feeder of my to-read pile. | COVID era silver lining: s o m u c h r e a d i n g |

chatelaine9's Reviews:

I bet this will be a pretty good movie.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

by Leave a Comment

SPOILERS KINDA SORTA I went into this ready to love it, and mostly did. Grace is a sad and lonely woman whose son and husband have died. She’s convinced herself she’s undeserving of love, or fun, or of much of a life at all. She’s retreated into math (she’s a teacher) and is kinda just waiting for it to be over. Then she gets some crazy news regarding an inheritance, specifically of a small house on Ibiza, left to her by a former colleague she […]

Live to work/work to live, la la la

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow

by Leave a Comment

I don’t know if this even counts – it might be a short story. But then again, it might be a novella (I read it online and wasn’t paying attention to its length). So, I’m both a great and terrible audience for this – I won’t pretend to have understood most of their sysadmin stuff. But I do love an apocalyptic situation. So…here we go. An extremely short and oversimplified synopsis might be Computer Geeks Save Us All. An extremely fast-acting virus has more or […]

That’s a lotta corpses, bro

A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

by Leave a Comment

I liked the other Jonathan Ames books I’ve read, and learned ten seconds ago that he’s the creator of Bored to Death, which, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a show on HBO Max (which I haven’t seen, but which multiple people have told me I’d like). Anyway. A guy named Happy Doll – for real, his parents named him that…seriously? a little much right off the bat – is an ex-cop who’s now a fairly unsuccessful, i.e., not busy,  private detective. A friend comes […]

what IS your deal??

Sugar Street by Jonathan Dee

by Leave a Comment

I read this book in half a day. I enjoyed the first third or so, then was increasingly frustrated with its lack of focus and definitely unsatisfied by the ending. This (unnamed) guy is on the run. That is interesting – you know, how would you even do that? Turns out it’s pretty difficult. He’s only using cash, has no ID, has fled his home, ditched his car, all of the things, in an effort to disappear. He ends up in an (unnamed) city, and […]

despair and disorientation

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

by 2 Comments

3.75 stars Nuri and Afra are Syrian refugees trying to make their way to England, where Nuri’s cousin, who also fled Syria, awaits them. They’ve suffered a loss that’s left Afra blind and functionally paralyzed with grief. This grief is like a tangible thing Nuri has to negotiate while at the same time trying to persuade her to leave, and also to keep from her as much as possible the level of danger they’re in by staying. Their PTSD, despair, and loss of hope have […]

You know how you can make it up to me? MURDER

The Bridesmaid by Ruth Rendell

by Leave a Comment

3.5 stars I’ve read and enjoyed quite a few books by Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, so this caught my eye. Philip is an absolutely run-of-the-mill man: decent looking, recently out of college, working in a field he pretty much likes and with dreams of bigger things, living with his mom and sister, just out of a relationship because he wasn’t ready to/couldn’t commit as fully as his ladyfriend wanted him to. You know, regular guy. His relationships with his mom and two sisters — all of […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo