Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Not too many “secrets” but enjoyable nonetheless.

The Secret Life of the American Musical by Jack Viertel

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#CBR11Bingo – I love this! Recently I’ve been enjoying a podcast dedicated to musical theatre and reliving my theatre kid days. So this audiobook seemed a good fit for my “I Love This!” category, as I do indeed love Broadway musicals. Jack Viertel has been involved in over 50 Broadway productions in various capacities, but mostly as a dramaturg and consultant on the writing end.  He teaches a course at NYU about the construction of the American musical, and that is what this book is […]

Meet Pals’ (the palindrome baby that had a few bumps in his life even before it was his life) Mom

Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley

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#cbr11bingo #Listicle Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley was not what I expected. Instead of getting a strong female voice, telling her story about miscarriages, pregnancy and the after-pregnancy issues, I expected something a bit more “introspective” and “flowery.” I expected a long explanation of how the author went through a spiritual journey to deal with her traumatic loss. What Knisley gives us is a funny, realistic, informative graphic novel. Knisley does not hold back. She talks about her childhood obsession with pregnancy, […]

Emotional ride

Autopsy by Donte Collins

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#cbr11bingo #rainbowflag Autopsy is one of those poetry books that could be extremely controversial. Not only are the subject matters not easy to deal with (race, class, death, adoption, sexuality), these subjects are not easy to read. The other part of this is, if for some reason you are not 1000 percent “on board,” it could cause accusations of racism and bigotry. Therefore, this is not the first book to start with when you are starting out with a book of poetry. Therefore, this book […]

“Finally, if you’re wondering if it counts and it feels like it counts, it counts.” (CBR11 Bingo)

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi

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When Rainbow Rowell says a book is her favorite of the year, I am going to add it to my to-read list and am likely to track it down relatively quickly. In the case of Mary H.K. Choi’s Emergency Contact it fitting into a Bingo Square category (Youths!) made it all the better. Let’s get the big verdict out of the way early: this debut is very good and Choi does the thing that I like best about Rowell’s work, she builds imperfect and entirely […]

Nothing better than reading Agatha Christie on a train!

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

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CBR11bingo: Summer Read I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie. Last year, when I finally got around to reading Murder on the Orient Express, I was surprised to discover that her writing was, perhaps, not as nuanced as I remembered it from when I used to devour her novels in grade school. So I was pleasantly surprised at Death on the Nile; I’d even hazard to say this might be one of Christie’s best. Although I saw the movie many years ago, I […]

Not all I had hoped for, but there’s enough here to bring me back.

RASL (Vol. 1): The Drift by Jeff Smith

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CBR11 Bingo: Illustrated It needs to be said (because I’ll take every opportunity I can to say it) that Bone is one of my favorite books, and I will never not recommend it to people. When I read comics as a teenager, it was one of the stand-out series being published at the time: creator owned, independently published, with all the writing and art done by one person. And it was beautiful. The writing was charming and endearing, and the art was ambitious, innovative, and […]



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