Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

And What Comes After Bans?

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

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Read as part of CBR15bingo: gender and banned. Maia Kobabe is a non-binary writer whose book Gender Queer has been banned at many schools and libraries across the country.  It almost made perfect sense that when I saw I had to read a banned book on gender for this challenge, I’d get to Maia Kobabe’s work. Maia’s book seems to have been the spark that ignited the fires of book banning in Florida. I will not argue that most Americans have a complex understanding of gender. […]

“An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched”

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012) by emily m. danforth

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CBR Bingo square “Queer Lives”: The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a queer YA novel, and was banned in a middle school in 2015 in Delaware for “inappropriate language.” I mean, fuck that. The novel was also criticised by the School Library Journal for its length and pacing, and my inclination is also to say fuck that, but I do understand that this is the kind of thing where YMMV. It did take a while to get into, but I was fully immersed when I did. […]

“In the end… the issue is always the same: European against Native, against me.”

This Earth of Mankind (Buru Quartet 1) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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If the last book I reviewed here was straightforward to get my head around, this one is the exact opposite. Fluffy Sherlock Holmes homage vs. Indonesian political drama? I don’t think you could get much different. I have had This Earth of Mankind on my to-read list for quite a while. Pramoedya Ananta Toer is probably one of Indonesia’s most well-known authors, and I always had the intention of picking up one of his novels. (Translated, of course; as the best I could manage in […]

One of the top most 100 banned books of the decade! (2013)

What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones

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CBR11Bingo – Banned Books Sophie has two lives – the one her mother knows, and the one Sophie hides. The one Mother knows is the sad one. The miserable home life Sophie spends as the only child of two people who hate each other. Her mother is deeply depressed, spending more time with General Hospital than with the family. Her father is cold and distant, unless he and mom are screaming at each other. But in her other life, the one her mother doesn’t need […]

Weird but not wonderful

The Buenos Aires Affair by Manuel Puig

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Puig’s most successful novel is generally viewed as The Kiss of the Spider Woman, which was given the Hollywood treatment in the 1980s (John Hurt won an Oscar for Best Actor and the film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Oscars).  The Buenos Aires Affair pre-dated Kiss, and was Puig’s first foray away from ‘safe’ novels and into seedier topics and more experimental narrative techniques.  I can appreciate that he was trying for something different but this was an uncomfortable and not particularly […]

Requires Research

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

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I am (mostly) unashamed to admit that my first encounter with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or any of Mark Twain’s books, were not in school, but on my own accord after watching Disney’s 1995 “Tom and Huck.” I was twelve, smitten with the carefree, super hot (at least I thought so at the time) characters going on crazy adventures, and after the movie was over, I wanted more. I read Tom Sawyer first and loved it since the movie follows it fairly closely.  I started Huckleberry […]



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