Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Growing Up takes a lifetime

Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff

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Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff is a memoir in a journal format that takes us through drug addiction, sex addition, and mental health issues from the point of view of the user/addict/person dealing with the mental health issues.. The selfishness, the recovering, the relapses, and more selfishness cover each of the pages. We see Nic getting sober from his pills, pot, and alcohol only to get into harder and harder things until meth is King. Until his addictions to sex and drugs […]

Things could probably be okay if it wasn’t for that meddling, dead, Abuela

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

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As a teen I might have been a bit more into Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland. The twist to the plot point was a bit of a slap, even though the description tells you what it will be. By going with a real “not dead” aspect, considering the spiritual aspects of the rest of the book was awkward. The pacing of the story is a slowly building up that at first was a great way to keep me […]

The years Alyssa and the world changed

Big Apple Diaries by Alyssa Bermudez

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I think I am reading too many coming-of-age graphic novels for younger readers. Big Apple Diaries normally would have been a 5 a few months ago for me. Yet even though Alyssa Bermudez tells a unique middle school experience due to it being set in a Catholic school, the issues of growing up are the same no matter who you are. No matter if you are half Puerto Rican, Catholic, tall, short, or blond, green eyes, have your parents divorced or together, everyone deals with […]

Asexual Cake

A Quick and Easy Guide to Asexuality by Molly Muldoon and Will Hernandez

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I really wish I had something like Molly Muldoon and Will Hernandez’ A Quick and Easy Guide to Asexuality when I was struggling to figure myself out. I did not hear the term asexual outside of very specific conversations about cellular reproduction. When I did start hearing the term in relation to human sexuality I initially confused it with androgyny, which is an entirely different thing. Fellow Cannonballers started reviewing Angela Chen’s Ace and I was very curious. Further investigation gave me an almost cartoonish […]

Hey Hey He’s Okay…!

A-Okay by Jarad Green

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A-Okay by Jarad Green seemed like it might have a slightly different take on the coming-of-age story. However, it turned more into a “boy doing the coming-of-age things like you would see a girl doing in a book.” In other words, a normal coming-of-age story. It is what everyone has had to deal with while navigating eighth grade. There is personal care, dealing with flaws real and imagined, trying new looks, hurting friends’ feelings, making new friends, and dealing with insecurities. We have seen it […]

“I go to the grave shared by my father and Jimmy. The question I get most, the one I hate, is why I went into his room. And why I helped people. Again and again, ‘Why did you do it? How?’ The answer is, How could I not?” (Bingo#1)

All the Young Men: a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South by Ruth Coker Burks, Kevin Carr O'Leary

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I read a lot of memoirs; I love listening to someone tell me their story. All the Young Men tells Ruth Coker Burks’ story as a young single mother in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who finds herself driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis and becoming an activist in the fight against AIDS. Coker Burks story starts in the way that I think many of us hope we would respond – while visiting her friend recovering from cancer surgery, she notices nurses drawing straws to […]



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