Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

#ActuallyAutistic

Sensory: Life on the Spectrum by Rebecca Ollerton

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Years ago I was visiting with a friend from college. During our conversation she looked at me and wondered if I had a lot of air signs in my star chart or if I was perhaps on the autism spectrum. At the time, neither of those things made any sense to me, but I figured that since she was a professional astrologer and the mother of an autistic daughter that she was seeing what she was used to seeing. At the time, my ideas about […]

You’re still the person who crossed a room to pick me out of the crowd.

Extra Witchy by Ann Aguirre

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Ann Aguirre’s Fix-it Witches series is doing some really interesting things within the contemporary small town romance genre. In Extra Witchy, Aguirre puts two characters who would typically be side characters in the middle of the action. Leanne is the ambitious career woman and Trevor is the stoner slacker who lives in his parents’ basement. In Witch, Please, their bathroom hookup at Danica and Clem’s party was a source of amused befuddlement, (though not unkindly because Ann Aguirre doesn’t do unkind). In another romcom, they […]

This review is coming to you from a real life dystopia

Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake by Mazey Eddings

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I am writing to you from the inside of an actual, non-fiction dystopia. The spoilers start now. I never liked the evil ex trope, and I particularly disliked the evil ex had an abortion variation. I used to come across it frequently in the late 1980s – 1990s. I haven’t seen much of it recently and I’m not at all happy about coming across it in Mazey Edding’s Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake. The book isn’t explicitly anti-abortion, and I have no idea which side Eddings […]

The urgent truth of our history is all around us if we choose to listen.

We’ve Got to Try by Beto O’Rourke

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When I saw the title of Beto O’Rourke’s new book, We’ve Got to Try, I thought, “yes, exactly! What are we trying?” We are trying to save democracy by rescuing voting rights from people who want to suppress it. That’s important, right? I think it’s important. I think it’s important to try and keep trying especially when success isn’t guaranteed. In We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible, O’Rourke is telling the stories of the people who fought […]

You have a deeply strange soul, and it’s pretty incredible

Season of Love by Helena Greer

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Do you like the idea of those Christmas movies where someone returns to a small town and finds the Spirit of Christmas, but you wish they were gayer and Jewish? Helena Greer’s Season of Love is for you. Season of Love is also for you if you ever wanted to read about a Jewish family trying to save the family Christmas tree farm while grappling with grief and trauma, but in a way that leaves you feeling like someone just handed you the best cup […]

The Necessity of Violence

Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators Revolution by R.F. Kuang

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I think my mixed feelings are going to come out so I’ll say up front that this is way outside of what I usually read, and while I appreciated that it is a very good book, I often didn’t enjoy reading it. I appreciate it more than I love it. But, I think it’s a worthwhile read. Maybe don’t pick it up right after you put down a book that owns your whole heart. This book is also in conversation with The Secret History and […]



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