Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Effects of Misogyny – From A(twood) to Z(umas)

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

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So apparently real life isn’t depressing and dystopian enough, so I made June my month to read (and re-read) books that construct an all too believable future for women and their reproductive rights. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was my book club’s pick for June and though I don’t know if I would use the phrase “looking forward to it” to describe how I felt about re-reading this novel, I was definitely curious to revisit it.  I read the book about a year after it […]

Must-read historical fiction.

The Huntress by Kate Quinn

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CBR11 Bingo – History/Schmistory   After reading Quinn’s previous novel, The Alice Network, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her new book. I adore her way of portraying women in historical fiction – finding the badass women who are the heroines of the story, not the background players. One part of this story follows the journey of Nina Markova, as she journeys from the wilds of the Soviet Union to Moscow, in order to join the Night Witches – a legendary group of […]

A badass female spy network? What’s not to love?!

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

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CBR11 Bingo – Far and Away   This category is a bit broad, but hopefully a novel set on a different continent in a different time period is far enough away? 🙂 The Alice Network starts off with American co-ed Charlotte (Charlie) St. Clair travelling to Europe to get “a little problem” taken care of (1947 translation: she done got knocked up out of wedlock and her wealthy parents are insisting on an abortion in Switzerland). Charlie’s motivations for agreeing to the trip to Europe […]

And so the journey to finding oneself begins

A Girl Called Echo V01 Pemmican Wars by Katherena Vermette

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#cbr11bingo #AndSoitBegins One of my jobs at the bookstore is to process our special orders. When I saw someone had ordered A Girl Called Echo V01 Pemmican Wars, I was intrigued. I had never heard of it. I did not know the author, Katherena Vermette, or the illustrator, Scott B. Henderson. That was not unusual, as I am not familiar with most graphic novel authors and/or illustrators, but one would have thought this book might have come up in searches for minority characters, characters who […]

Patsy

Libra by Don DeLillo

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Read as part of CBR11 Bingo: Birthday. Lee Harvey Oswald’s birthday was October 18 (making him a libra, hence the title!). Two things are common with both mass shooters and high profile assassins: 1. They are almost always male. 2. They almost always have some sort of personality disorder which makes it difficult for them to fit into polite society. Fringe groups prey on these kinds of people. They suck their soul to the marrow, leave nothing left, and abandon them when their presence becomes an inconvenience. […]

Gives new meaning to ‘Shoot for the moon’

The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin

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CBR11 Bingo – Travel   The conclusion of The Broken Earth trilogy sees mother and daughter, Essun and Nassun, both setting out on their own journeys to change the course of history. (as this is the end of the series, this is super heavy with spoilers; be ye warned) At the end of book 2, both Essun and Nassun are coming into their full powers and know that to affect the world in the way they see best they need to gain control of the […]



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