Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“He still woke up some days and believed for fifteen seconds or so that he had something to do, until he remembered he didn’t. The sixteenth second was a killer.”

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

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CBR11 Bingo: #pajiba I hadn’t heard of this lovely book until Dustin wrote about it over the summer. And then I saw it EVERYWHERE. On every list. In every store. Every day on every social media platform. Apparently, I had to read it. I’m quite glad I did. Evvie Drake has been widowed for about a year. She has barely coped since her husband died — she doesn’t leave the house much, she doesn’t really socialize with anyone (ecxept for her best friend, Andy), and […]

Satisfying Follow-Up

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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BINGO: Pajiba Best for: Those who have read (or watched) The Handmaid’s Tale. In a nutshell: We know that Gilead eventually fell. But how? Worth quoting: “The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.” “Another girl’s disgrace could rub off on you if you got too close to it.” “They said calm things like ‘You need to be strong.’ They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a […]

Child me would have LOVED this book, adult me thinks it’s pretty great: CBR Bingo – Birthday

Matilda by Roald Dahl

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When looking for which authors have a birthday to fit the bingo requirements, I discovered that Roald Dahl’s birthday is September 13th.  I’ve previously read a few other books by Dahl but had never read Matilda, so this seemed like a good time. When first published in 1988, I would have been eight years old and it would have been perfect for me to discover in about another two years.  However, it escaped notice and when the movie came out in 1996, I was entering my […]

Who doesn’t want an exploding wicker chicken?

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

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CBR11 BINGO: So It Begins This novel is a re-read for me. I am a huge fan of Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocolseries. However, her shift to YA in the Finishing School series set prior to the shenanigans in the Parasol Protectorate books didn’t really do it for me. To appeal to a younger audience, Carriger dialled down her hallmark cheeky sexual innuendo and unfortunately some of her witty banter and sass went along with it. I recently read Carriger’s latest and supposedly last full length novel set in the […]

“But what do I know? I’ve only been around 4.5 billion years or so.”

AstroNuts Mission One: the Plant Planet by Jon Scieszka, Steven Weinberg

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cbr11bingo – Birthday! Earth is now on the brink of being inhabitable, and she’s got no bones to pick about telling us why. Luckily, as she reveals to us in her narration of AstroNuts, NNASA (Not the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has been planning for just such an event, secretly creating four super-space soldier animal hybrids in their secret laboratory under Mount Rushmore. Blasting off in Thomas Jefferson’s Nose Rocket, AstroWolf, LaserShark, SmartHawk, and StinkBug launch their mission of finding an unoccupied Earth-like planet […]

Talking Without Speaking, Hearing Without Listening

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

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CBR11 Bingo Square: Birthday Originally I wanted to read Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere for the birthday bingo square, but since our library had this book available first, I figured it was worth a read. And it certainly hit on a few soft spots in my heart along the way. Emotions? Yeah, I have those in spades, and this book absolutely brought some of them out. Everything I Never Told You centers on a mixed-race Chinese American family named the Lee’s in the 1970’s, whose […]



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