Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Casseroles, Jello Salads, and Few Funny Names

1982 United Methodist Recipes Albion NE by Albion United Methodist Church

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Bingo 11: Red I thought I’d dropped something into a box of very old things belonging to my grandmother and great-aunt so I dug through it for the first time in a long while. Turns out I hadn’t dropped the thing (found it a few minutes later under something else) but it was not a wasted search because in the box was a church cookbook (probably my great-aunts) from the year I was born, and guess what color the cover is? Going through a 43-year […]

In the Early 1980s Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary

My Picture Diary by Maki Fujiwara

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My Picture Diary is an odd little book. It is a day-to-day/day in the life of the author, Maki Fujiwara (also illustrated by) and her family. Things are fairly dull on the surface, but a lot is going on nonetheless. You can see the era (the late 1970s/early 1980s) and the culture and country (Japan); and of course, the husband and wife and the parent(s) and child relationships. The illustrations are simple, but deceptively so. The style itself is not overly detailed, but they do […]

An unsettling tale of true friendship and demons, literal and metaphorical.

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

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I don’t know exactly why I’m having such a hard time writing a review for this book. It’s pretty straightforward! (if weird). Best friends in the 1980s (get ready for some Reagan-era skewering) persevere through the power of friendship over evil. Plus lots of 80s nostalgia (including some contemporary language usage that was definitely common then but isn’t accepted now, so be warned if that might bother you). The thing about Grady Hendrix is that he knows how to write characters who are realistic and […]

CBR15 Bingo: North America

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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CBR15 Bingo: North America I’ve been hearing about this book since it came out. So many people I know on the internet and whose opinions I trust have read, reviewed and absolutely loved it. So I feel bad only rating it four stars, but for all that that the story and the characters appealed to me, there was something that kept making me prioritise other things over listening more to the audio book, and I never really fully emotionally connected with this one. There are […]

How much of yourself you have to leave behind in order to look like everyone else

Lie With Me by Philippe Besson

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I’m in this state of one-way desire. I feel this desire swarming in my belly and running up my spine. But I have to constantly contain and compress it so that it doesn’t betray me in front of others. Because I’ve already understood that desire is visible. ― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me I’m guessing that there was probably no bolt of lightning, just a warm night full of wine and fluttering moths and the feeling that nothing is really important and everything is possible. […]

I remember this being one of my first moments nearing adulthood, when I realized how powerful memory was — or at least it was the first time it hurt the most. And there was nothing I could do about the pain of the past — it just settled over me

The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis

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CBR Bingo – Queer Lives “Y’all. Bret Easton Ellis is NOT OKAY.” So says I, at my book club where we read this book. I read American Psycho about a decade ago and distinctly remember getting to something so disturbing that I yelped out loud, slammed the book shut, and tossed it across the room. If that visceral experience sounds exciting to you, well Ellis has plenty more to disturb and haunt you with, and in this, his newest book, he will take 595 pages […]



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