Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The future isn’t a warning my friend, it’s a promise.”

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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CBR12 BINGO: Cannonballer Says I decided to read The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle for the “Cannonballer Says” BINGO square after reading Narfna’s review. Or rather, I should say, after skimming Narfna’s review, because as soon as I saw the basic premise and the spoiler alerts, I averted my eyes and decided to go no-contact on any reviews until after I had read it. I’m glad I did; yet here I am with the impossible task of describing a book I really enjoyed without giving […]

Fanfic — Classics Edition

The Song of Achilles: A Novel by Madeline Miller

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Cbr12bingo Gateway BINGO horizontal (Gateway to Shelfie) I first read The Song of Achilles for CBR4, and for me, it is the gateway to a genre that I will call “reimagined classics” or perhaps “fanfic: classics edition.” This is the first book I can remember reading that is based on a classic story, in this case The Iliad, expanding on a part of it and telling it from the perspective of a minor character. Re-imagined classics allow authors to go into more detail on aspects […]

This is your brain on music

Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

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CBR12 BINGO: Music BINGO: Red, How-To, UnCannon, Roaring 20s, Music A 42-year old orthopedic surgeon is hit by lightning and suddenly develops an insatiable passion for piano music. An elderly man with semantic amnesia bursts into song at the slightest provocation. An elderly woman has lived her life unable to “hear” music, which manifests itself to her mind as an intolerable cacophony. These are just a handful of the real individuals we meet in Musicopophilia, Oliver Sacks’s exploration of the interactions between music and the […]

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

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CBR12 BINGO: Violet Square So very late to this party and I’m more than a little disappointed in myself that it took a CBR Bingo Square to get me to read it. It was not at all what I expected. Told through a series of letters written between sisters and from one sister to God, The Color Purple is about a lot of things: racism, classism, abuse, love, family. At it’s heart though, is a beautiful story about a woman, who against all odds and […]

“John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage.”

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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CBR12 BINGO: Yellow Square I’m finding the random color square bingo row pretty delightful. Since I don’t have many titles on my TBR pile that fit the bill, I started Googling around to find titles that fit the colors. The yellow search yielded an interesting little bit of feminist short fiction published in 1891. Perkins Gilman puts a fictional spin on her experiences with the “bed rest cure” that doctors of the time prescribed for women suffering from “nervous” conditions. In her introduction, she notes […]

A delightful British rom-com (Bingo #6)

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

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4.5 stars #CBR12 Bingo: Reader’s Choice (replaces How-To) Official book description: Wanted: One (fake) boyfriend Practically perfect in every way Luc O’Donnell is tangentially–and reluctantly–famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything. To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and […]



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