Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

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Updated review September 15, 2022:  Re-read this for Cannonballread’s Banned Book week. I did something a bit different for this though. I really just re-read my favorite parts of this book (which there are a lot) but then I also re-watched the movie that came out based on this book. I have to say parts of the movie were very well done, such as when Starr and her mother and others film the police with their phones when her father is being accosted by the […]

More Memoir-Manifestos, please!

All Boys Aren't Blue by George Matthew Johnson

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CBR Bingo – Bodies, because this book is all about how the author came to accept his identity – his life in his queer, Black body – it’s a letter of acceptance for everyone who might need it, which includes all of us. I loved this memoir – this vulnerable, beating heart of a book – which explores the life of a young, queer Black man growing up in New Jersey. Johnson describes how he came to accept himself even as he struggles with two […]

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 […]

“Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.”

Carrie by Stephen King

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#CBR11Bingo — #bannedbooks The first time I read this book was the summer before I went into 8th grade. A friend at camp had her mom’s copy of The Shining, which we all read, and became obsessed with. The next time I went to the library, I headed right over to the Adult “K” section, and found a paperback of Carrie, sitting along with Firestarter, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Cycle of the Werewolf, Night Shift, and a few other King titles. I read them all that […]

Belief in mysteries—all manner of mysteries—is the only lasting luxury in life.

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The Witches of Worm was nominated for a Newbery Award in 1973, but ultimately lost to Julie of the Wolves. It is still one of the creepiest books I can remember reading, yes even Goosbumps or Scary Tales to Tell in the Dark, partly because the horror was all psychological. Anyway, I wanted to see if the book still holds up so I reread it this weekend, and boy does it. As an old favorite this fills the Throwback Thursday slot on my Bingo card. […]

We Like Banned Books and We Cannot Lie

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The list of the American Library Association’s Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of the 21st Century reads like a Best of Cannonball Read list. That’s no surprise, really. With books like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, Of Mice and Men, the Harry Potter series, and our most recent book club selection, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, those lists include many wonderful books that we’ve loved and recommended time and again. From CBR4 in 2012 through the end of August […]



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