Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I don’t enjoy being a hater, but I wish this book had remained a secret

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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CBR11bingo: Listicle (Goodread’s Books That Everyone Should Read At Least Once) The introductory blurb to The Secret Garden on Amazon reads, “Opening the door into the innermost places of the heart, The Secret Garden is a timeless classic that has left generations of readers with warm, lifelong memories of its magical charms.” I must be a much more cold-hearted bastard than anyone ever suspected and am likely to be doomed to the same circle of Hell as people who didn’t cry at the opening sequence of Up, because […]

Political Thrills in a Cataclysmic World

City of Stairs (The Divine Cities Book 1) by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Blades (The Divine Cities Book 2) by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Miracles (The Divine Cities Book 3) by Robert Jackson Bennett

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In my review of Red Rising, I asked about what it is that makes you decide whether or not to embark on a new series. Once again, I would like to build off this to ask a slightly different question – what makes you decide to back to a series that you left by the wayside? I hadn’t meant to abandon reading Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities Trilogy. But unfortunately, life got in the way. I got introduced to the series via the Hugo Awards […]

Non-fiction review dump (and two CBR11 Bingos)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi, Joshua David Stein

Naturally Tan by Tan France

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

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Whoo-hoo! Two non-fiction books gets me two more squares and two Bingos! I may not manage a black-out before the end of the month but I am finally making some headway in this game. CBR 11 Bingo: Award Winner The Devil in the White City- Erik Larson Y’all, I read this book in July and then completely forgot about it. In my defense The Devil in the White City has the dubious honor of being the book I was reading when I found out I was pregnant and […]

How I met your (1940s) father

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

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I never actually did read or watch Eat, Pray, Love so my disdain for the work of Elizabeth Gilbert was purely by cultural osmosis. I can’t say City of Girls did much to elevate her for me, though. It wasn’t bad, but neither was it good. It just kind of … was. The novel is narrated as a confessional of sorts, an older woman telling a younger woman the story of how she met her father so the whole meat of the story is in extended flashbacks. […]

It got me another bingo at least

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

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Bingo square: Award Winner. It won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, 2017 and Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. In the distant future, war is a thing of the past. A utopia, fast car transport has meant countries are no longer boundaries. You can live in Italy and work in the US and go to school in Australia. People no longer belong to nations but Hives, chosen for their best fit to personality and beliefs. Nor do nuclear families exist, […]

It was magic, until it suddenly wasn’t: CBR Bingo – Pajiba

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Ever since Daisy Jones and The Six was released, it has been on my radar, in particular because it was highly praised on my two favorite pop culture websites Pajiba and Lainey Gossip .  When CBR Bingo was announced, I instantly knew what my Pajiba square book would be.  My first title for this review was, “What I imagined the 70s rock n’ roll scene was like”, but while Daisy Jones and The Six is a great time capsule into that era, that is not what the […]



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