Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Sylvia did reach her dream of becoming a ballerina. And it all started with one determined girl with one library book from one bookmobile.”

Ready to Fly: How Sylvia Townsend Became The Bookmobile Ballerina by Lea Lyon & A. LaFaye, Illustrations by Jessica Gibson

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We’re gonna start off today’s review by (potentially? I don’t think I’ve talked about this here before) learning a new thing about NTE: I used to be a dancer. Before my body decided that anything that required even standing was completely out of the question (so from age 3-15, basically), being a dancer was a major part of my identity. I danced five days a week – tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, & pointe. Pointe was – by far – my worst class (I had […]

So, Do You Like Knives?

The Martial Arts of Indonesia: A Guide to Pencak Silat, Kuntao and Traditional Weapons by Donn F. Draeger

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  Yes, I am really amusing myself here for picking a ‘sportsball’ book where balls don’t really feature in the sports of focus. To make up for that though—as I discovered—nearly everything else that you could think of has been used as a weapon in an Indonesian martial art at some point. This includes knives, more knives, swords, shields, sticks, more knives, whips, chains, and teeth. And the knives? More knives than spam in Monty Python. Some of these people folks really love their knives. […]

Gao’s debut is messy, but yet, it is wonderfully so!

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

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Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American is a messy book. But it is all wrapped up in a neatly created graphic novel. The world of Laura Gao has been seen in other stories (this is a coming-of-age story with features we know: immigration, expectations of family, coming out), but hers is completely unique to her and therefore, to the reader. At first, the book seems like it might be about the pandemic, and what happens to her and her family as Chinese […]

“Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that’s always too small.”

Björnstad (Beartown) by Fredrick Backman

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CBR13 Bingo: Sports Ball (could easily also be used as Rec’d, since a lot of Cannonballers have read and reviewed it favourably) Official book description: People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better […]

The World Was Not Enough

It's Better To Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: sportsball On February 3, 2002, I sat on my dad’s couch in Maryland to watch the Super Bowl. Usually, we had a party but this year, no one really felt like partying. We had just gotten back from a weekend trip to Columbus, Ohio and we were both tired. We tuned into the game, promising to root for the underdog Patriots against the highly favored, turbocharged St. Louis Rams even though we anticipated it’d be a rout. On February 3, 2019, […]

And *I* have trouble climbing out of bed!

How to Solve a Problem: The Rise (and Falls) of a Rock-Climbing Champion by Ashima Shiraishi

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We all know, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” but perhaps we should have taken a page from rock climber, Ashima Shiraishi’s book, How to Solve a Problem: The Rise (and Falls) of a Rock-Climbing Champion. Shiraishi shows how she tackles the issue of getting the perfect climb. Everything is a problem you can break down and work out. And when you fall, that is just another problem to solve. And we learn that not only is a boulder a problem, but the […]



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