Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Jenny S

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By day (and night really), I teach writing and help run a writing center at a community college in the Chicago suburbs. However, my superpowers include creating towering stacks of to-read books next to my bed.

Jenny S's Reviews:

We Are All Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

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#CBR11Bingo – And So It Begins Until that night the maji were able to survive because they used their powers to defend themselves. But eleven years ago, magic disappeared. Only the gods know why (15). This book has been on a lot of “must-read” lists and I’m a fan of writers who draw on diverse cultural traditions to develop their fantasy worlds.  One of the things that surprised and intrigued me was how even though this novel is set in a fictional country/region, the story […]

First Love with A Lot of Good Supporting Characters

P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

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Last fall, I watched and enjoyed the Netflix adaptation of Jenny Han’s first book about Lara Jean, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.  A few months later when I read (but did not review) the novel the film was based on—I was pleasantly surprised.  The book was even more complex and nuanced than the movie—especially with the relationship between Lara Jean, her two sisters and her father. There is more about her Korean heritage in the book and about her father’s attempts to keep […]

Stories with Cider that End Well

The Simplicity of Cider by Amy E. Reichert

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I’ve had Amy Reichert’s The Simplicity of Cider on my to-read shelf for a long time.  Some friends of mine and I pass around books every time we meet for dinner, and last summer my friend handed me this, saying, “It’s cute and it’s about cider.”  I took it, my sister read it on our vacation, but somehow I never got to it.  Finally, because I’m trying to (god forbid!) cull my bookshelves a bit and I wanted something light and fun, I decided to […]

Pam Houston is my Weakness

Deep Creek - Finding Hope in the High Country by Pam Houston

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About twenty-five years ago, I remember picking up a short story collection called Cowboys are my Weakness and falling in love with Pam Houston’s writing.  Though the characters and contexts she wrote about were far different from the world I was navigating in the Twin Cities post-college, I still felt a strong connection to the stories and emotions they created. Flash forward several decades and I’m listening to Pam Houston read aloud the piece, “The Season of Hunkering Down” from her newest book, Deep Creek […]

Power to Unruly Bodies

Hunger by Roxane Gay

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Roxane Gay’s memoir, Hunger, has been on my to-read list for some time and I thought I had some idea of what I was getting into.  However, I was not prepared for how immensely readable this book was but how gut wrenchingly brutal it was at the same time.  For those who haven’t read it (or read about it) the subtitle is “A Memoir of (My) Body” and it is the verbal equivalent of Roxane Gay stripping naked, standing in front of her readers, and […]

I’m No Hero . . . I’m More of a Last Resort

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

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“But I’m no hero. I’m more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I’m the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags” (2). There’s nothing like the feeling when you discover the first book in a series and it hits all your readerly buttons.  I was pretty sure I was going to like Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse when I read about it—searching for women Native American authors to support (in the aftermath of the Sherman Alexie scandal.)  […]



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