Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When Your Sweet Tooth Comes Calling

Midwest Made: Big, Bold Baking from the Heartland by Shauna Sever

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Midwest Made: Big, Bold Baking from the Heartland by Shauna Sever My rating: 4 of 5 stars I like baking more than cooking so a cookbook focused on baking also catches my eye. I also know that the Midwest is known for delicious bakes that aren’t pretentious or complicated; I was sold. Another draw to the book, but also problematic, was the Eurocentric nature of the recipes. I’m not from the Midwest, but my grandparents were part of the Volga Germans who settled the Great […]

She works hard for her money and channels Julia Child in the process

Measuring Up by Lily LaMotte

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Measuring Up could cover several categories in cbr12bingo, but I am going to use it for Money. Even though the money aspect is a small part of the story, it is also not as small as it might seem at first. Lily LaMotte’s story of Cici, a young girl from Taiwan, moves to Seattle, with her mother and father and leaving behind her beloved paternal grandmother. Her A-ma was more than a grandmother, she was a best friend, teacher and the one person who “got […]

Friendship can stink….

Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake

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Friendship slot for cbr12bingo done Skunk and Badger (book one of a planned at least trilogy) are The Really Odd Couple. I have no doubt that the others are going to keep this interesting new Buddy Series on its toes! Amy Timberlake created a book that has an old school/old world feeling to it. I thought of Frog and Toad and Wind in the Willows while reading it. The story behind getting my copy of this due in September book, is a slightly odd one. […]

It’s not easy being green but the planet will love you for it!

Green Machine: The Slightly Gross Truth about Turning Your Food Scraps Into Green Energy by Rebecca Donnelly

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The first cbr12bingo book for me is GREEN Who knew that when I was looking at reader copies, Green Machine: The Slightly Gross Truth about Turning Your Food Scraps Into Green Energy would not only be a book that would talk about being green and environmental issues but would be a “green” book! Green Machine is a clever book about recycling and how what goes around, comes around in an illuminating manner. Rebecca Donnelly talks how the cycle starts by buying the food that we eat, […]

If Neruda could write about an onion, my poems are not that out there….

Ode to an Onion: Pablo Neruda and His Muse by Alexandria Giardino

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While Ode to an Onion: Pablo Neruda and His Muse might not be my favorite book of all time, it is one of the first book in a while that I have truly loved. A book that I felt in my gut. I got engrossed in this book in a way I have not in some time. And it is “only” a picture book and not some “thoughtful novel.” It is a thoughtful picture book. The prose of Alexandria Giardino is a poem as it […]

Four plants in search of a human

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

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I have the sneaking suspicion that this started out as four books before Pollan decided there wasn’t enough material to sustain each (or, in the case of the Dutch tulip mania, too little undiscovered ground to cover) and smushed them all together into one okay book by deciding the unifying theme with each plant he wanted to write about was that they all evolved to be appreciated by humans for different reasons. Well, yeah. That’s more or less what evolution is – what is of […]



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