Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Baking with Pride means lots of food coloring

Baking with Pride by Janusz Domagala

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Baking with Pride involves a lot of baking with color; seriously, stock up on gel food coloring if you plan on baking much out of this book. Janusz Domagala was one of the fan-favorites on a recent season of Great British Bake Off, and his book is out just in time for Pride month; not a coincidence, as Janusz sort of quietly advocated for LGBTQ causes his whole season (watch his shirts). Every other recipe or two page has factoids about LGBTQ history, or some […]

Ask yourself, “what do I want to do with my one wild and precious life?”

Hers for the Weekend by Helena Greer

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I have been waiting for Tara Sloane Chadwick to gracelessly fall on her ass in love since meeting her in Season of Love. She is an ice queen lawyer, determined to always do the right things, to fit in perfectly with Charleston’s old money society so she can take it down from the inside. She’s looking for a lesbian marriage of convenience while she politely dismantles the carceral system. Tara wants to use her wealth and privilege to make the world better while keeping her […]

Gender nonconformity Pride

Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding by Maia Kobabe and Sarah Peitzmeier

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I will start my review of Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding with I am a cisgender female who has never experienced the body dysmorphia the people interviewed in this book have experienced/are experiencing. I understand disliking one’s body and the emotional results that can create, as I have had my own issues with body love, but I cannot understand the depth that impact can take on one when it is not only not “right” by not only “looking wrong”,  but also is the wrong gender […]

“How many Reenas are there in this goddamn world?”

Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk by Rebecca Godfrey

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This is a very well written work of non-fiction. The author is in fact a writer of fiction, but she spent years investigating the crime at the center of the story (now a series on Hulu) and interviewing the many people involved. She attended trials and spoke with legal and law enforcement agents. This story of the murder of a 14-year-old girl by her peers is both chilling and difficult to put down. Godfrey paints a vivid picture of a community rocked by the shocking […]

“It is always awkward to be face-to-face with people who have what you want.”

Wrong Way by Joanne McNeil

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Even though Joanne McNeil is a “technology” writer, she always writes first and foremost about people. In her non-fiction book Lurking, she used her own experience growing up online to explore how over time people became “users.” (Blech! I miss you, 1990s internet!) She starts close and human and then zooms out to larger cultural issues. I think that’s where the power of her insight comes from – the humanity of it. McNeil’s debut novel Wrong Way is fiction, but the author employs the same […]

A World You Want To Wear Like a Blanket

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

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Becky Chambers’ first Monk & Robot book, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, struck a chord in me in a way that few other books have. Chambers built a world so beautiful, so full of hope, that I just wanted to curl up in it like a blanket. She continues that glorious world-building in the second book, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. Picking up right after book 1, we join Sibling Dex and Mosscap as they re-enter human territory and plan to introduce Mosscap to the […]



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