Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Don’t Judge Books by their Covers and Don’t Miss these!

Snow Birds by Kirsten Hall

The Snow Fox by Rosemary Shojaie

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Nothing like having a few minutes to read a picture book. The thing is, with these two books I need a lot more than a few minutes! I need to sit down and take oh, 3 to 5 minutes per page. Each book has details in their illustrations that make them frame worthy. Snow Birds at first made me think, “Okay, one to three words per page. And if a complete sentence is not there, I would not be surprised.” Well, that old adage, Do […]

Connection and poetry

The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus

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I am always applying for reader copies from various of places due to my job. Then, every so often a book arrives at work.  I then say to myself, “Self. What did you order this time?” A while back I ordered The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus. From what I can tell this might be a reissue, however, the copy I have says it is due late March/early April 2021. I picked this powerful poetry collection about life, family, and an individual’s struggles one day at […]

Took a “year” to read, but a lifetime for the poet to live

The Black Unicorn by Audre Lorde

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I was given The Black Unicorn: Poems by Audre Lorde a few years ago as a Cannonball book exchange gift. Like so many of my books, it was misplaced for a bit (I am not the most organized person to be frank), but recently found it hidden among other lost souls. I started reading this collection of poetry from 1978 (my edition revised in 1995) in 2020 and finished last night (January 3, 2021). Took a whole year! (Okay, year jokes over). Why did this […]

I guess I just don’t get the “narrative in verse” sensibility.

SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson

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This three (and a half) star rating is entirely personal preference. I just would prefer that this book was in prose instead of verse. I would nearly always prefer a work be in verse if it is possible. Obviously if your aim is to write poems, individually crafted ones with like, a poetic aim or whatever (I have no idea why poets do what they do) that’s not gonna work. But here, this is a memoir, and while there were several “poems” that worked as […]

Catching Up

Matchmaking for Beginners by Maddie Dawson

Nothing Is Okay by Rachel Wiley

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Whoops. Apparently my CBR 12 goal was 26 books, not 13. Two reviews here, and then we’ll see if it’s possible for me to read 2 more books and review them over the next week. Nothing Is Okay by Rachel Wiley is a book of poetry that I initially hadn’t planned to review because I don’t really know how to review a poetry book. But I’ll give it my best shot. Wiley is a fat, queer, woman of color, and she is unabashedly all of […]

Cohesive beauty that’ll knock you off your feet

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

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Joy Harjo a member of the Mvskoke Nation and is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. In An American Sunrise, Harjo skillfully crafts a collection poems that are deeply personal to her own life, highly informative of the Native history and experience, and wonderfully universal in truth and beauty. What I found the most beautiful of the entire collection was Harjo’s ability to weave not just consistent themes throughout the entire collection but her ability to layer details, events, and people throughout the […]



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