Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.”

James by Percival Everett

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I heard from multiple people that James was THE BOOK to read last year, and it was on a lot of best of lists, so I was exicted to give it a read. It fully hooked me from the first sentence “Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.” I didn’t have a lot of expectations about this book, but having me chuckle from the start was a surprise. This is a retelling of the classic tale Huck Finn but from the […]

Makes me wish I knew more about jazz

Jazz by Toni Morrison

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CBR12 BINGO: The Roaring 20’s Have you ever gone to the movies, and as the credits roll, you can’t say that you loved the film  or that you hated it, you just kind of think, “hmmm,” but for days after you find yourself pondering it, and visions of certain scenes and themes invade your thoughts, so eventually you come to realize that you’ve experienced something special? Jazz is like that. During the first few chapters, I appreciated the beauty of the language but couldn’t help […]

See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

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CBR11bingo: Own Voices I struggled for quite some time trying to decide what to read for CBR11 Bingo’s center square. I’m so glad that I finally landed on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, not just because it’s a book I definitely should have read by now, but because it’s moving and beautiful and painful. I expected The Bluest Eye to be powerful; I didn’t expect it to be poetic. This novel tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl growing up in […]

Our Beloveds

Beloved by Toni Morrison

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Not too much to say about this one except every word just drips with rawness. The question is what would you do? Would you do as Sethe did? Would you have done something differently? I can’t imagine being owned by someone. I can’t imagine my body not being mine to command. I can’t imagine my children being someone else’s property. “Beloved” follows Sethe, a former slave that managed to escape to Ohio more than a decade ago. However, Sethe is haunted by the choices she […]



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