Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You Cannot be Unchosen

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

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It’s been a while since I’ve had so much difficulty writing a book review. This has nothing to do with my current work load, or even with the book being bad—far from it, the book is absolutely brilliant. You can see why it won a Nebula. It’s just surreal And a little opaque. But in a very impressive way. Especially when you consider that this is the author’s debut novel.  The Saint of Bright Doors is the story of a young man named Fetter, who […]

“Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders.”

Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

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For several years, I participated in a local mediation non-profit organization. One of my fellow volunteers was a career coach, and informally, a life coach. She had the calmest, welcoming demeanor. In every interaction, you left feeling that she wanted the best for you. I very much valued her input on my life, as well as her friendship. She was a big reader of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, so I have started reading him, as well. I started with the slim yet dense Being […]

Shifting My Perspective

Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh

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Best for: Those looking for ways to process and manage fear. In a nutshell: Zen master Nhat Hanh shares thoughts related to processing, confronting and addressing fear. Worth quoting: I took so much away from this book, but some highlights: “When we climb the hill together, we don’t need to make an effort; we enjoy every step.” “Each of us is life without limit.” “We cannot remove violence with hatred and anger. We can only remove violence and fear with compassion and love. Why I […]

Nice illustrations and wisdom to help calm the mind

Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury

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CBR 15 BINGO: Guide, because this is a guide for calm. (The dedication reads, “This book is dedicated to everyone who gets lost.”) I was given a copy of Big Panda and Tiny Dragon for Christmas last year, and I opened it with some trepidation. My last foray into self-help territory didn’t go well, if you recall. However, I was pretty sure I could at least finish this one, given that it includes cute pictures of a panda and a tiny dragon. Self-help isn’t really […]

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Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise by Justin Zorn, Leigh Marz

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Golden articulates the zietgeisty feeling that our world and our minds are too daggum noisy. We need less less less, and we need things to quiet down. In this book, authors Zorn and Marz diagnose the problem, look at the benefits of silence, and then provide examples of how to bring more silence into our environment. By environment, I mean internal, communal, and global. First, what is silence? The authors make the point from the very beginning that silence isn’t the absence of noise so […]

No One to Really Root For but It’s Still Somehow Pretty Good

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

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She Who Became the Sun definitely lived up to the hype; the characters are interesting and complex, and there is plenty of action and plot. What bothered me was that there was really only one character who stood up for general human decency, not just “I must take charge of my destiny no matter what I have to do (including murdering innocent people and not so innocent people)”. The basic premise is pretty well known already: in a quasi historical early medieval China, a nameless […]



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