Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About RouletteGirl

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Pajiban who loves to read and thinks cancer sucks.

RouletteGirl's Reviews:

Be Cool, Sodapop

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

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I don’t know why I’d never previously read The Outsiders. I grew up loving another S.E. Hinton book, That was Then, This is Now. That book has some overlapping characters as The Outsiders; the Shepard brothers appear a few times, and Ponyboy is mentioned. But despite the fact that I grew up loving Bryon and Cathy, and re-read that book many times, I somehow never picked up any of Hinton’s other novels. This year, the PS Reading Challenge has a prompt to read a book […]

Tiger King, But With Dragons! (and protagonists you actually root for)

Dragon Kings of Oklahoma by Ferrett Steinmetz

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As the author himself describes it, Dragon Kings of Oklahoma is Tiger King with dragons. Daisy & Wild-Eye are volunteer firefighters and drug couriers in the small town of Douay, Oklahoma. They’re called out to a fire at a camper, and find the camper completely demolished with the owner charred right along with it. They also find a mama dragon guarding five little dragon eggs. Daisy just so happens to have a touch of druid in him, thanks to his absentee mama, and is able […]

Moody Detective Fiction in the North Country

The Woman Who Married a Bear by John Straley

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What happens when you take the elements of a pulp fiction crime novel but move it up to the 80s and set it in Alaska? You get Cecil Younger, the alcoholic private investigator main character of The Woman Who Married a Bear. We meet Cecil the morning after a bender, as he battles a hangover while preparing to meet a potential new client. The client, an older Tlingit woman, asks Cecil to find out who killed her son, Louis Victor. Only problem is, Victor’s killer […]

Really Side-Eyeing The New York Times Over Their Choices

Pastoralia by George Saunders

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This was one of the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century? This? Friends, I loathed this book. 160 pages was probably 150 pages too many. There were few if any likeable characters, no one had a unique voice, and the crassness wasn’t shocking in an absurdist way, it was just unpleasant. I picked this up because of the New York Times list and because it fit one of this year’s PopSugar Reading Challenge prompts: a book with a one-word title you […]

A Reflection on Grief & Culture

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

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I’ve read many books over the years that have made me cry, novels and memoirs both. Few books made me cry while also making me hungry from the incredible depictions of food that tied so closely to the emotional heart of the story. And yet Crying in H Mart had my nose running and stomach rumbling throughout. Written by Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast, Crying in H Mart is a memoir about the cancer diagnosis, failed treatment, and subsequent death of her mother. It is […]

Now I Want a Three Sisters Garden

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Have you ever read a book that made you incredibly sad while still filling you with hope? A book that was knowledgeable and beautiful and made you want to go outside and bury your fingers in the dirt? That’s what Braiding Sweetgrass is to me. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawotami botanist and professor at SUNY’s school of Environmental Science and Forestry. This nonfiction book combines scientific knowledge of agriculture with Native practices and wisdom, but it is so much more than that. Throughout the […]



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