Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Pooja

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Ardent reader of pretty much anything, including the backs of shampoo bottles. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Pooja's Quick Questions interview.)

Pooja's Reviews:

“You want to know if they’re the mittens I wore to Biden’s inauguration. That’s all anyone wants to talk about these days: mittens, mittens, mittens.”

Feel the Bern by Andrew Shaffer

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CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books from different countries #1 When Crash, a new intern working for Bernie Sanders, accompanies her boss up to a small-town festival in Vermont, the last thing she expects is to discover a dead body – or that Bernie will insist on trying to solve the mystery. A few years ago I read Hope Never Dies, a comic mystery where Obama and Biden team up in the post-2016 election season to uncover the truth behind an Amtrak conductor’s death. Now Shaffer has […]

“You could have kissed me or slit my throat and either would have made as much sense.”

A Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson

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CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books you already own #1 In a lyrical letter to the lover she killed, Constanta recounts their history together, as well as that of his other ‘brides,’ and what drove them to do as they did. I had high hopes for this book. I don’t usually love vampire romances, because I feel like they often underplay the dark and twisted nature of the vampires of myth – so the fact that this book promised to go back to those terrifying roots drew […]

A Few Squirts of a Turkey Baster

Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings by Chrysta Bilton

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CBR15 Passport Challenge: New to you authors #1 Chrysta and her sister are the daughters of a dynamic and damaged woman, a single lesbian who yearned for a child in the rather unaccepting 1980s – and found her ideal sperm donor in a hair salon. But both Debra and Jeffrey hid many secrets from their children. There’s that oft-quoted opening sentence of Anna Karenina – “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I thought of that quote, and how […]

Is the Past Written in Sand or Stone?

Saving Her Highland Traitor by Maeve Greyson

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CBR15 Passport Challenge: Different (sub)genres #1 After Mira and her godson Robbie travel back in time to 18th century Scotland, they settle into a content life with Clan MacDonald. But when Mira realizes that the chief, Teague, is destined to be executed before the end of the year, she becomes determined to avert his fate. Time travel historical romance is a niche genre that I’ve had very little exposure to. I enjoy straightforward historical romance, but the fish-out-of-water aspect of it, as well as the […]

“I’m not holding you against your will; I’m holding you against your car.”

Mr. Perfect by Linda Howard

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CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books recommended by friends #1 When a list of attributes that “Mr. Perfect” must have goes viral, the worst that the four authors think will happen is some unwanted publicity – but they realize that things can get much worse as someone begins picking them off one by one. I picked this book up on a whim – I’d never read this book before, but one of my Goodreads friends reviewed and it seemed like a fun read. Most of the romantic […]

The People Make the Place

The New Yorkers: 31 Remarkable People, 400 Years, and the Untold Biography of the World's Greatest City by Sam Roberts

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New York City has seen nearly a billion inhabitants in its 400 year long history, and a great many of them have been very remarkable. But there are also many how had an indelible impact on the city, even if they are mostly forgotten today. I do not like New York City. I am a Bostonian through and through. But I’ve been there many times, and I must admit that there is really no other place like it. The city has a strange essence to […]



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