Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott (1994)

Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott

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CBR13Bingo – Self-Care A collection of essays and memoir pieces connected to writing that shares wisdom and thoughts on both writing and publishing. Mostly this collection is focused on publishing fiction, the slight irony being that I would argue that this book, in solitude, and maybe some of the nonfiction recent pieces, are 100% of how people think of Anne Lamott’s writing in general, and not her fiction. That said, the advice is funny and humane and solid throughout. I wish Anne Lamott would just […]

River of Earth – James Still (1940)

River of Earth by James Still

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CBR13Bingo – Shelfie This is a 1940 novel by the Kentucky writer James Still. I learned about James Still from Lee Smith’s memoir Dimestore, where the older writer clearly had some positive influence over Lee Smith both in writerly ways and in personal ways. This novel is narrated by a seven year old boy who is watching from his perch as his family, his parents, and his neighbors deal with the realities of rural Kentucky life, the Great Depression, and just the regular vicissitudes of […]

Three by Jan Morris: Conundrum (1974

Conundrum by Jan Morris

In My Mind's Eye and Thinking Again by Jan Morris

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Cbr13Bingo – Rep Conundrum – 5/5 Stars Because I have read Jan Morris’s only novel (and only fiction)Last Letters from Hav, and its follow-up (often packaged together), Hav of the Myrmidons, I spent some time looking through her biography and bibliography. I knew of this book too, which dwells on her thinking, experiences, and ruminations about sex and gender, particularly her understanding as a child that she was trans (she uses the outmoded term “transsexual” in the book) and the journey that her to eventual […]

A Memory called Empire – Arkady Martine (2019)

A Memory called Empire by Arkady Martine

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CBR13Bingo – New Series You’d have to tell me if my perception of this book is correct, but I read this book as an outsider looking into human culture as an empire and seeing it from this perspective. It’s the future, and it’s maybe a future version of earth or a future of humanity. We are following a new ambassador making her way to the head of this empire from her native Lsel station, a non-planetary, science-heavy but small civilization. This new arrival loves the […]

Longitude – Dava Sobel (1997)

Longitude by Dava Sobel

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CBR13Bingo – Book Club (James Mustich’s 1000 Books to Read list) A short history of a scientific problem being solved over the course of decades. One of the biggest problems in seafaring pre-1700 involved the very imprecise methods available for determining longitude. Latitude apparently is fairly easy because lines of latitude as concentric and consistent. Longitude is much more difficult because it requires information contrasted with a fixed point, something much more difficult to acquire in the middle of the ocean. Britain, certainly known for […]

Lee Smith and friend

Oral History by Lee Smith

The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed by Lee Smith

Sweet Hollow by Lou Crabtree

Fancy Strut by Lee Smith

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Cbr13Bingo – Gateway Oral History – 5/5 Stars I don’t know what they did to this book, but the most recent covers are terrible. I love Lee Smith, and I like a lot of fiction that looks like the recent covers of these books, and they are NOT the same. This book is devilish. You should know that going in. Our protagonist is a contemporary woman living in a small town in the far southwestern mountains of Virginia. This panhandle part of Virginia is so […]



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