Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“…leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a ghost…”

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

by Leave a Comment

Cbr14bingo Adapt/bingo – the story is about Darling adapting to life in Michigan after growing up in a Zimbabwean shanty We Need New Names is what I would call a fictional memoir based on the author’s childhood experience of moving from Zimbabwe to the United States. Darling, a teen living in Michigan with her aunt’s family, remembers growing up in a shantytown called Paradise with her friends, dreaming of moving to the United States, and then experiencing the reality of life here. This is a […]

down to the wire (as always) – BOOK CLUB TIME!

All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

by Leave a Comment

Why did I wait so long to read these two? This isn’t just a question of Book Club procrastination; this is a “what was I thinking?” moment! I had heard good things about both, I was enraged as ever when they (and others) showed up on lists of challenged and banned books, and they were both available on scribd! Also- why did I treat these books like homework? “oh man, I have to read these before I can move on to other things”- at the […]

“I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.”

My Life in France by Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme

by 4 Comments

The story of Julia Child’s years in France in her own words was literally the second book I put on my Goodreads to read list in January 2012. It has taken me this long to get to it, but I’m perfectly happy to have waited until I was in the right mood – even though this book made me hungry every time I picked it up. My Life in France is exactly what the title says it is. For most people the contents of this […]

What if we’re underwhelmed instead?

We are all Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

by 1 Comment

Karen Joy Fowler’s book starts in the middle with a bang, with her main character, Rosemary Cooke, away at college and undergoing some youthful rebellion. Rosemary tells us of what seems like her idyllic early life back in the mid-west: she has two loving parents, an older brother, Lowell, and a younger sister, Fern. Lowell is someone to look up to while Fern is Rosemary’s shadow half- they are raised to do everything together, dressed in matching outfits and speak in their own language. Rosemary […]

I Finally Got There—I Finally Read Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

by 2 Comments

Caution, mild spoilers ahead. I have tried not to explain too much beyond the blurb in this review, but I don’t think I can talk about Project Hail Mary properly without pulling back the curtain—just a little—on one of the major plot points. It probably won’t be a huge deal as this book has been out a while, and I suspect most people are probably already conscious of the little point I want to reveal, even if they haven’t read the book. But I just […]

Grab Bag

The People of Paper by Salvador Plascensia

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

Mountain by Cixin Liu

The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

First Person Singular by Haruki Murakmi

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson

Homecoming by Eddie Huang

The Matchlock Rifle by Walter Edmonds

Two Logs Crossing by Walter Edmonds

Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving

Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

by Leave a Comment

Mortality – 4/5 Stars This is a partial memoir and final notes first published by Vanity Fair and then in book form from the final days of Christopher Hitchens. There’s a part in the middle of every thing where someone tells Hitchens something like “God works in mysterious ways” and Hitchens wonders what is so mysterious about a heavy smoker getting advanced lung cancer. That’s the basic idea here. First things first, it’s not secret that Hitchens is a bit of a bugbear, and for […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo