Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

So. You Like Mountaineering? Say No More.

Singing Waters by Ann Bridge

by Leave a Comment

So I picked this up from a library book sale because it had an old 1940s-ish binding (turns out publishing date is 1946) and I am a sucker for those.  There is an embossed scene of a mountainous valley on the cover, but the author is unknown to me.  We start off with a man with the Scandinavian name of Nils on a train wandering through the Italian pre-WWII countryside.  He ends up being paired in the dining car with an attractive fellow solo passenger, […]

I am the passenger. I stay under glass.

The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee

by Leave a Comment

The Expatriates was a big buzzy book when it was first published and has been sitting on my TBR pile for literal years. I decided to read it when I saw that Prime was turning it into a series. I have not watched the series since finishing the book and I have no plans to, which should tell you what I thought of it. I love “rich people problems” stories, but I’ve figured out that the rich people in question need to be so insanely […]

Octopus’s Garden-Variety Novel

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

by Leave a Comment

Seventy-year-old Tova Sullivan works as a cleaner at a local aquarium to keep busy after the death of her husband. While doing so, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Marcellus, who happens to be a Giant Pacific octopus. Marcellus is not just any ordinary sea creature, however. He is supremely intelligent and a cunning escape artist, prone to late-night adventures like invading the other creatures’ habitats and even the aquarium’s offices. Marcellus even narrates some chapters, dating each from the start of his captivity, […]

a thousand apologies and what feels like a thousand reviews (through November 2023)

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Kindred by Octavia E Butler

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hinumegin er mars by Sólrun Michelsen

Trust by Hernan Diaz

How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't by Ian Dunt

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It by Owen Jones

In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomás González

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The City & the City by China Miéville

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin

Passion Simple by Annie Ernaux

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers

The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon

A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas

Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within by Rory Stewart

Rivals by Katherine McGee

Reign by Katherine McGee

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

The Iliad by Homer, Emily Wilson

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

10 Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy

A Little Life by Hanya Yanighara

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

The Starting Over Game by girl_with_kaleidoscope_eyes

by 1 Comment

Edinburg by Alexander Chee CBR15: Sex True fact, when someone British asked me what I was reading I pronounced this “Edin-BERG” and to their credit they didn’t laugh but instead asked, with some horrified sincerity, if that’s how Americans say it. It’s not! At least, not on purpose. It’s just how can the English language claim to have been invented in a country that seems to not have grasped even a shred of understanding of how the various letters in it work? I digress. This is […]

The Very Best Book of All Time?

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

by 2 Comments

I read this, like it was homework, over the course of six days. I know that a lot has been said about this book, often by some very, very intelligent people.  I have read none of it.  I didn’t even read the introduction (because it’s by Dave Eggers, ugh). (This is going to be filled with spoilers – Infinite Jest is over 20 years old, so anyone who wanted to be unspoiled has probably read it once or twice by now – but consider yourself […]

Who wanted this banned and why?

Class Act by Jerry Craft

by Leave a Comment

Drew Ellis goes to the prestigious Riverdale Academy Day School, but unlike a lot of his more privileged classmates, he feels like he has to work way harder and he still might not get the same opportunities that they do. While a lot of his fellow students live in enormous mansions, Drew lives alone with his grandmother (who has to work almost constantly to provide for him). He also knows that no matter how good his grades are or which school he attends, most people […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo