Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About cheerbrarian

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I am a born and bred southerner and transplant to the Midwest. I read because I NEED to (as a former English major, it's in the DNA) and because I'm possibly ignoring frigid temperatures. Until summer, and then I'll just be reading outside. I also enjoy cooking, witty banter, and cheese. All the cheese. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ardaigle's Quick Questions interview.)

cheerbrarian's Reviews:

“It’s funny. No matter where you go, or how many books you read, you still know nothing, you haven’t seen anything. And that’s life.”

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (#1) by Satoshi Yagisawa

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Behold, the second of two short “ack wait I’m not at my goal” books I read in the past three weeks to try to get to my 52 books a year goal. Am I going to make it? No. But I’ve made peace with it. But onward to the book! Coming in at a mere 150 pages, I came upon this teeny book at a bookstore in Los Angeles (I swear, I just went in to look! I wasn’t going to buy anything! And other […]

“Art was dangerous, it gave you ideas.”

Normal Rules Don't Apply by Kate Atkinson

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Behold, the first of two short “ack wait I’m not at my goal” books I read in the past three weeks to try to get to my 52 books a year goal. Am I going to make it? No. But I’ve made peace with it. But onward to the book! I hadn’t read any Atkinson before but in my push to read more books as the year came to an end, a collection of short stories seemed like just the ticket. It’s the perfect medium […]

“When we’re mindful, we notice sooner when we’re barreling into mental “time travel.” We come back to what’s in front of us, which otherwise may not get much attention at all. We recognize when thoughts make a challenging situation even more challenging.”

Mindfulness and Self-Compassion for Teen ADHD: Build Executive Functioning Skills, Increase Motivation, and Improve Self-Confidence by Mark Bertin and Karen Bluth

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Beginning this review has been more challenging than I anticipated because I find myself stumbling over language. There is a lot of misunderstanding and stigma around ADHD. I don’t like calling it a “condition” and I certainly don’t want to call it a “disorder” because that supposes that there is a “right” way to be and exist. In our society, we have lumped brains into “neurotypical” and “neuroatypical” categories, and ADHD drops you into the “neuroatypical” box. Having a diagnosis for my kiddo has enabled […]

“There, it had happened, I had done it: spoken out loud, for the first time in my life, the words of William Shakespeare. In the moment, it was no big deal. Shakespeare, up to that point, had held no meaning to me. But writing these words now, I feel a thrill.”

Making It So by Patrick Stewart

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I am a big Star Trek Next Generation fan and a medium X-Men fan, so part of my science-fiction-loving nerd heart beats for the one and only Sir Patrick Stewart. It still wasn’t a done deal that I was going to read his book because I seldom pick up memoirs but when I found his book (and his face) staring me down at my local library, I submitted to my literary destiny. It was in many ways, an eye-opening experience for me to read, but […]

“The world is paralyzed, and humanity is in quarantine. It is a strange symmetry that I was born in one pandemic and will die during another.”

Violeta by Isabel Allende

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This was the library book club pick for the month and my first Isabel Allende novel. I looooved it, but it was a highly contested work at the book club (with many people rating it very poorly), but since this is MY review I’ll defend my position, and (somewhat begrudgingly) give insights into the critiques. This novel reminded Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko” in its tone and ability to captivate me, and in introducing me to a geography/history that I don’t know a lot about (in […]

“Whether you’re in the curled-in-a-ball stage or you’re just wandering around feeling dissatissfied, resentful, afraid & unsure of yourself, the case is the same: too much listening to your fraidy cat over-analyzing, assumption-making judgmental puddleweed of a mind.”

Whose Mind Is It Anyway? (Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life) by Lisa and Franco Esile

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Due to a random turn of events, my husband came with me to the library to pick up a book I had on hold. I realized though that I in fact did NOT have a book on hold, the library had called me because I had a book overdue. (OOPS: confessions of a delinquent reader, who has a fine-free library). I obviously couldn’t leave empty-handed (I’m not a monster) so I perused the hot picks, the new fiction, but nothing was speaking to me. I […]



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