Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy walk into a bar… wait, that’s not right…

Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir & Sarah Andersen

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Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Wendy from Peter Pan, and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz have all had a rough go of it after their adventures in the stories.  And the stories we were told were not their only adventures.  No, these girls have grown up a bit and have spent more time in their respective other worlds.  Alice is bitter and angry, Wendy always carries a knife, and Dorothy has been subject to electroshock therapy, but that last bit is cannon, I think.  […]

Grounded in reality, gripping science fiction: cbr12bingo White Whale

SevenEves by Neal Stephenson

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SevenEves is my “White Whale” for Cannonball bingo 12.  When it came out, my spouse raved about it and in the five years since its release, SevenEves keeps cropping up on “best of lists” and positive Cannonballer reviews.  Despite all the positivity, I was resistant to reading based on size and how that could affect my cannonball.  The White Whale square gave me an excellent reason to move it to the top of the TBR. To some extent, my title says it all.  SevenEves is one […]

Say Their Names

Six Days in Cincinnati by Dan Mendez Moore

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Cbr12bingo No money I received this graphic history as a gift recently. It’s a short book about the race riots that rocked my hometown Cincinnati in 2001 and about the systemic racism that runs throughout our country still. Writer/artist Dan Mendez Moore was a high school student in Cincinnati when police violence led to public demonstrations, riots and a curfew. This story, first published in 2012, revisits his experience of those days and provides the point of view of key community leaders who were also […]

“On a little street in Singapore We’d meet beside a lotus-covered door”

The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

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  This book is what I call a “cozy-ish mystery.” It’s not an examination of the darkest parts of humanity, nor does it take place entirely in a knitting shop in a cozy New England hamlet. It’s just about the perfect thing for me when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the world or my previous read or both. The murder still feels important to the story without getting you bogged down in misery. This is the first in the Crown Colony series and I’ve added the […]

“They were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra, in which all there was to do was cry and wail.”

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma

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CBR12 BINGO: UnCannon BINGO: UnCannon, Nostalgia, Yellow, Happy, Repeat The description for the “UnCannon” category in CBR12 Bingo advises the reader to “Challenge yourself as much as you are able.” So while I could have picked up any book by a female author (of which there are many on my TBR list) to satisfy this category, I chose to read something by 34-year-old Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma. My husband read An Orchestra of Minorities last year and raved about it, so I decided now would […]

The bridge is love

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

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Cbr12bingo Roaring Twenties I know I read this book in high school, but I didn’t remember much about it before re-reading it this week. I think it’s the kind of novel that means more to you the more you’ve lived and seen of the world, and reading it in our very troubled times was a kind of balm for the soul. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, published in 1927 and winner of the 1928 Pulitzer, is the fictional story of five people whose lives […]



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