Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Leedock

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Disney World lover. Chewbacca hugger. Reader of books. Writer of words. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Leedock's Quick Questions interview.)

Leedock's Reviews:

We need to tell each other the ugly stuff, the stuff we’re ashamed of.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

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CANNONBALL!!!! Yikes. I signed up for the half to give myself some breathing room this year and here I am at a full with over a month left to go. I blame CBR Bingo! This was my book club’s pick for November. It kept popping up in all my normal bookish circles, prominently displayed at the library and virtually pushed by Amazon and Goodreads. Reading it, I suppose, was inevitable. After emigrating from Korea, Young and Pak Yoo work hard to forge a new life that […]

To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

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This is a novel that I will be thinking about for a very long time. It’s so far out of my sphere of relatability that it is almost impossible for me to form a coherent thought about it. Not easy to read, and equally difficult to review. Weaving back and forth through time, Vuong’s novelized autobiography is about growing up as a Vietnamese immigrant in Hartford Connecticut in the 1990’s. Written as a letter to his mother who cannot read, the young man known as […]

… and just like that, he was ready to build her a French bakery brick by brick with his own hands.

The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas

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The fourth book in the “Lady Sherlock” series is out! I really enjoyed the first three books in Thomas’ gender bending re-telling of Sherlock Holmes. If you haven’t read the books, by all means do! They are delightful mysteries set in the same world as the classic Sherlock Holmes but with a twist. Here, Sherlock is the fictitious brother of Charlotte Holmes created as a smokescreen that allows her to earn a living as a detective in Victorian London. Many of the characters from the […]

Beasts of jargon.

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

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Let’s face it. If Rainbow Rowell wrote the instructions on the back of a box of oatmeal, I would read it. Many Cannonballers understand exactly what I’m saying and I have to thank their rave reviews from the early days for introducing her to me. “Fangirl,” in particular, is one of my favorite books. Rowell captures what it’s like to be a college freshman: starting at square one, trying to make new friends, and figuring out who you are. The main character in that novel, […]

This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

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CBR11 BINGO: Back to School Square BINGO BLACKOUT!!! I don’t often re-read. I like to live in the world of a book for a bit and then move on. While there is currently a metric crap ton of books from my high school and college past staring at me from the book shelves in my house, the dust is rarely blown off one unless I am trying to foist it on my teenage son. “Here! This is a gooood book!” I am 99.9% sure that […]

Our childhood was a fire.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

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Books that follow a set of characters over decades (in this case a span of 50-ish years) and allow the reader to watch lives unfold from childhood to adulthood are fascinating to me. I appreciate the time spent to grow with them and to see how and why they become who they are. Combine that with the succinct, marvelous, heart-wrenching prose that Patchett dishes out and I am invested. When Cyril Conroy purchases a mansion outside of Philadelphia as a surprise for his wife, Elna, […]



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