Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Manimama

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I'll read anything if it stands still long enough

Manimama's Reviews:

An amazing job, indeed

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

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    A great thinker* once said that Frederick Douglass is “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more”.  I was so inspired by this, I decided to read Frederick Douglass’ story in his own words. Plus I found this book at a used-book table at our local Greek festival and couldn’t pass it up. Douglass wrote a clear-eyed description of his life from his earliest memories to his life after escaping slavery. He knew his mother […]

Featuring the fastest copy machine available

The Firm by John Grisham

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  This book did not age well. The Firm was published in 1991. It is a fast-paced legal thriller that was made into a 1993 movie starring Tom Cruise. If John Grisham was not writing the entire book based on the mental picture of Tom Cruise playing the main character, Mitchell McDeere, I will eat my shoe. The entire book is written as distinct scenes for some men to jaw at each other in manly ways and then a quick cut to another scene. Mitchell […]

For fans of Rick Riordan

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

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  Aru Shah and the End of Time is the first in a ‘Rick Riordan Presents’ and follows the plot beats of Riordan’s own series pretty faithfully. For fans of Percy Jackson, Jason Grace, Magnus Chase, Carter Kane, and Lester Pappadopoulos (my personal favorite) this book will feel very familiar. Aru is a seemingly normal 12-year old, being raised by a single mom. Like Riordan’s characters, Aru has no real knowledge of her missing parent until the book begins to unfold. Aru’s mother is an […]

A long sigh

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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Normal People is a quiet, thoughtful meditation on the ways we influence each other- for both better and worse. Connell and Marianne attend school together as teenagers but pretend not to notice each other during school hours. After school, they gradually develop a relationship that affects the next four years of their lives (and likely much longer). Whether together or apart, as friend or foe or lover, the existence of the one marks the actions of the other. This is less a love story and […]

Regressive but with a veneer of ‘Girl Power!’

The School for Good and Evil: A Crystal Of Time by Soman Chainani

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This is the fifth book in the School for Good and Evil  Series. If you haven’t read the others, I don’t suggest you start here. If you have read the others and found the plot to be messy and the story unnecessarily prolonged, you won’t find much different in this book. I have tried to like this series. My daughter is thirteen years old, and she has read them all. We read a lot of older kid and YA series together. She is very much like […]

Two Cute Stories

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory

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I had read The Proposal last year when I got in in my Book of the Month Club. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t stick with me. I then read a Cannonballer’s review of The Wedding Date and thought I’d give it a try. The Wedding Date tells the story of Alexa, Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Berkeley, CA. She gets stuck in a hotel elevator when on her way to meet her sister and ends up spending time trapped with Drew. Drew is a […]



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