Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Bite-sized sorcery and sunshine

GMorning, GNight! little pep talks for me & you by Lin-Manuel Miranda

by 4 Comments

I wanted my first read of this year, and my first CBR11 review, to be of Gmorning Gnight for a lot of reasons: Because I don’t know about you, but I could use some pep talks.  Because Lin-Manuel defines happiness to me, seems like maybe he’s a sorcerer, and somehow manages to elevate even tweets to an artform.  Because the illustrations of Jonny Sun shine with a Silverstein-ian simplicity that radiate glee and grace.   Because “its nice to have things to hold on to, some […]

None of these are turning out quite right

Edward's Menagerie by Kerry Lord

by 3 Comments

But- this is a book of crochet patterns! Can you really have read this book? The answer here is a resounding yes, because none of my attempts at making these animals is turning out right! I have read this entire thing several times and it has not seemed to help much. I so far have a lamb that looks a bit horse-like, and a cat that looks like a fox, and now a Dorset sheep that is near completion and looks closest to the pictures […]

Clubhouse Chemistry is Overrated

Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley's Swingin' A's by Jason Turbow

by 1 Comment

Every year I try to read a book or two about baseball during the long off-season. It feels a little more productive than looking out the window and waiting for spring. Jason Turbow’s Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic is a non-fiction account of the great Oakland A’s teams of the early-to-mid-seventies. For those of you who aren’t baseball obsessives, the A’s won three consecutive World Series, in 1972, ’73, and ’74. They had some all-time greats and All-Stars all over the diamond. Despite their advantages in talent […]

No Sophomore Slump Here

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

by 2 Comments

On the NYT book list for Young Adult/Hard Cover, Angie Thomas reigns as queen. Her debut novel The Hate U Give has been at or near the top of the list for 103 weeks. It is currently number two. The number one spot is held by Angie Thomas’ follow up, On the Come Up. Thomas takes us back to the Garden Heights neighborhood but we see it from a different perspective this time. Brianna Jackson, known as Bri, is a teenager who lives immersed in the […]

…and then I creeped their entire family on Facebook.

Educated by Tara Westover

by Leave a Comment

I added this as an impulse buy to an Amazon order because I kept seeing it pop up on so many “Best of 2018” lists. And for good reason. As many others have said, this book is phenomenal. Educated is Westover’s memoir; her story of growing up in an extreme, fanatical, Mormon household (no one was permitted to see a doctor, children weren’t enrolled in school, half of the kids didn’t even have birth certificates, etc). She eventually escapes from this life and goes on to […]

Presidential…or How to Not Be like Donald Trump

Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

by Leave a Comment

So I am a moron. I had no idea there were two other books before this one. I felt like I got plopped into Theodore Roosevelt’s life and felt confused. Once I realized that I was on the third book I felt better since I was all, why is the book acting as if I read about Theodore Roosevelt before now? I have to say though that my attention kept straying away while reading this. I thought that Morris does a good job of bringing […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo