Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Sophia

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I love to read, and I love to learn. I wish I were retired so I could spend more time on my random hobbies!

Sophia's Reviews:

Teenagers, chess, and romance

Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

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I’ve read a number of women-in-science, love stories by Ali Hazelwood, but this is the first young adult, romance I’ve read by her. This one is about chess. Mallory Greenleaf loved chess; in fact, she was obsessed with it. And she was very good at it. Trained by her father, she was working her way up the ranks even as a young teenager. But then she saw her dad kiss another woman. It tore their family apart. Mallory blamed herself and quit playing chess. Mallory’s […]

Murder in the Philippines

Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista

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Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in my Country (2023) by Patricia Evangelista was another Barack Obama recommendation. It is a non-fiction account of Rodrigo Duterte and his “war on drugs” that killed thousands of innocent people when he was President of the Philippines from 2016-2022. Patricia Evangelista is a journalist from the Philippines who personally investigated and reported on many of these extrajudicial killings that were attributed to Duterte and his regime. I knew (and still know) very little about the Philippines, although […]

Fun and satisfying

Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes

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I’ve read a couple of books by Jojo Moyes now, and I’ve found them interesting and fun to read. So, I decided to listen to Someone Else’s Shoes (2023) as my next audiobook. The book takes place in London. Sam Kemp, a hardworking, frazzled mom, accidentally picks up the gym bag of Nisha Cantor, a rich and privileged woman. This accidental switch has pretty drastic consequences for both of them. Sam is headed to an important work meeting, and her only shoes are now the six-inch Louboutin […]

“But the hubris of excess has mortal consequences.”

Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang

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I found Land of Milk and Honey (2023) by C. Pam Zhang on NPR’s Books We Love List. The description caught my attention, so I put it on hold at my library. One of the first blurbs on Amazon says, “One of the most pleasurable, inventive reads of the year…fiendishly deliciously fun.” Now that I’ve read it, I’d say that’s a bit misleading. I would not use “pleasurable” and “fun” to describe this book, although “inventive” is very fitting. An American woman in her twenties just got a […]

It’s not a walk in the woods

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

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I’ve already read A Walk in the Woods and The Body by Bill Bryson, and I found them both entertaining and informative. So, when I went looking for another audiobook for my commute, I decided to give At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010) by Bryson a shot. Bill Bryson lives in an old parsonage in a rural part of England, and he uses this home as a framework to work through a lot of history that made his home a home. Although he goes into a number of […]

I read (almost) everything Barack Obama tells me to

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

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This Other Eden (2023) by Paul Harding is another book that I picked up because it was one of Barack Obama’s favorites of the year. Harding tells the story of a small group of people, some of them mixed-race, who lived on a tiny, rugged island (Apple Island) off the coast of Maine in 1911. The largest family was the Honey family. Esther and her son, as well as her son’s three children all live together. It is a hard existence, but they generally have what […]



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