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.

 

The past is never past

Beauty is a Wound: A Novel by Eka Kurniawan

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Cbr15bingo Asia & Oceania I have never before read a novel quite like Beauty is a Wound. It is a combination of history, myth, magic, spiritualism, violence and absurdity. Set in the fictional Indonesian town Halimunda, Beauty is a Wound is the story of three generations of a family and of Indonesia under Dutch colonialism, Japanese occupation, and the political strife that followed WWII. It is about the greed and selfishness that allows individuals and nations to dominate, use and abuse the objects of their […]

The Only Self Help Book I’ve Ever Recommended

how to keep house while drowning by kc davis

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  Hello and welcome back to me! I haven’t reviewed a book since March of 2021, so you know this book was really something if it finally got me back on here and posting. It isn’t enough to simply recommend to my IRL friends, I need to share the joy of it over CBR, too. I also bought a physical copy of my own to access whenever I need it. A little understanding of me – I hate self help books. I’m thrilled they help […]

The Book of Three

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

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After reading a smidge too much big kid literature, I decided to reread one of my favorite YA book series of all time: The Chronicles of Prydain. I reread these stories at least half a dozen times in middle school through high school. They inspired my love of fantasy stories that persists to this day, and I can tell that the lessons they imparted were important, because they were hard for me to hear as a kid. The story is set in a half-history half-mythological […]

“It’s harder to come back than it is to arrive”

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes

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CBR Bingo Square: Violence Maddeningly, I now don’t know what put Dorothy Hughes’s 1947 noir In a Lonely Place on my radar. (I thought it was Susan Straight’s 1001-book literary map of America, but…apparently not?) All I know is that I am a sucker for A) mystery novels, and B) novels about my home state, and what reliably ticks both boxes? Noir. And Dorothy Hughes was a new discovery for me, which made this novel all the more appealing. Also, deliciously, In a Lonely Place isn’t a […]

Beauty and the Beast, Shackled

Marvelous by Molly Greeley

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CBR 15 Bingo: Bodies, Bodies – Most everyone in this book is concerned with Petrus’s body – specifically the coat of hair that covers all of it. Pedro, a young boy with the rare condition that caused him to be covered with hair from head to foot, is bought as a gift for the French king, and eventually is married to Catherine, the beautiful daughter of a penniless merchant. I have heard of the story of Petrus Gonsalvus, but only in passing, merely the fact […]

I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.

Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

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I was so afraid for you, I forgot to be afraid for your enemies. ― Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar These three novels were my entry into the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. There are a few different entry points, but these three provided the right amount of backstory at the right time. I’ve read that you can begin with The Warrior’s Apprentice, however you would miss out on some wonderful characters that are only referenced within the two earlier books. Shards of Honor is […]



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