Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

…we would never outgrow the cautionary tales.

Whisper Network by Chandler Baker

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CBR11 BINGO: Reader’s Choice (Sub for Two Heads are Better Than One Square) I now have a Pavlovian response to any Reese Witherspoon book club pick. I immediately request it from the library. I think that I just need to accept this about myself. Set in the law offices of a successful Dallas sporting good company, the story is part mystery and part social commentary. It’s an up close look at the unfolding of the #MeToo movement in a corporate office where the man poised […]

How to get a book banned in six easy steps

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

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CBR11bingo: Banned Books BINGO! Vertically: Youths, Illustrated, Classics, Rainbow Flag, Banned Books The Banned Books bingo square is one of my favorites in CBR Bingo. I like to peruse lists of banned books and see what foolishness is causing people to get up in arms. I also like to combine the square with something I’ve been wanting to read, and Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple was the perfect choice. It’s been on my TBR list for ages, and I was surprised to […]

Debut novel worth noting (Cannonball and Bingo Blackout)

Oksana, Behave! by Maria Kuznetsova

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Cbr11bingo Reader’s Choice, substituting for Two heads are better than one Bingo Blackout/Cannonball! I picked this one up for the cover, but I bought it because it is related to the interests of my youth — Slavic studies and history. Maria Kuznetsova’s debut novel manages to be both funny and serious as she describes the life of Oksana Ivanovna Konnikova from her childhood, when the family moved from Kiev to Florida, until her adulthood. Oksana has to deal with loss, uprootedness, unrequited loves, and disappointing […]

“Her quickness of mind was like a hiss, a dart, a lethal bite.” (CBR11 Bingo)

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (Translator)

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Friends, I really tried with this one. This story should work for me. Check out this Goodreads summary: “The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise […]

Last Square for the Blackout! Also, a great Halloween read.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Last Bingo: Reader’s Choice to cover “Two Heads are Better than One” I’ve been seeing Gideon The Ninth hyped all over social media for months, and it sounded really cool and interesting. To cite the blurb across the front cover: “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!”  This is actually a largely accurate description of the premise: the immortal Emperor sends out a message to the nobles (ie- necromancers) of each of the 9 Houses in this universe to send their strongest necromancer-heir […]

“I try not to expect people to be who I wish them to be, rather than who they are.” (Bingo #2)

A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2) by Sherry Thomas

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In setting up the prompts for our Sherlock Retellings Book Club I realized one of the parameters I use when deciding if something is a good retelling or remix: a good retelling for its own sake, needs to have enough of the original’s connective tissue without feeling like it’s been made using tracing paper. In the Lady Sherlock series Sherry Thomas split the various characteristics across several characters and I think it worked really well to not have direct analogs for the most part. Its […]



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