Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Another Jackie Lau that made me very hungry

The Ultimate Pi Day Party by Jackie Lau

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Official book description: If there’s one thing that might get my dad, a retired math teacher, to visit Toronto and have a real conversation with me for the first time in seventeen years, it’s a big nerdy Pi Day party. And hopefully this party—and seeing the tech company I built from nothing—will finally be enough to impress him and make him forgive me for everything I did when I was a teenager. But it’s got to be a really great party. That’s where Sarah Winters […]

Legacy

Red at the Bone:A Novel by Jacqueline Woodson

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How is it that some writers, in under 200 pages, can paint for the reader a vivid picture of 100 years of history, of family dynamics, love, pain, frustration, success, and loss, while others in nearly 800 pages can only manage to cover a fraction of the time and far less of the depth of feeling of their characters (looking at you)? Jacqueline Woodson is one of the finest writers of our time. She has won numerous awards, including for her critically acclaimed YA memoir-as-poetry […]

On the outside looking in

Almost American Girl: An Illustrated Memoir by Robin Ha

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This wonderful illustrated memoir is Robin Ha’s story of moving from Seoul, South Korea, for  the US as a teenager in 1995 and trying to make a new life here with her mother. It is a deeply moving story of a young girl, only 14, being suddenly uprooted from her friends and community, and having to learn a new language, adapt to a new family, and figure out a new culture in Alabama. Thanks to her art, Robin (formerly Chuna) finds a way to bring […]

Smash the Patriarchy

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

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The Mirror and the Light ends Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, a commoner who rose to the heights of power serving Henry VIII only to die by the axe as a traitor. This third volume is a slog — 759 pages devoted to the last years of Cromwell’s life, from the summer 1536 to the summer of 1540. While volume two tripped along a good clip in its depiction of the fall of Anne Boleyn (always interesting to read about), this […]

…the carefree scoundrel and the sensitive spinster…

The Lady Travelers Guide to Scoundrels and Other Gentlemen by Victoria Alexander

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My not so bad habit of judging a book by it’s cover had me snatching this book up at the local drugstore where it has languished in my TBR pile for a few years. I was always going to get to it, but the library prevailed. With no library access and after finishing the last three books that I had checked out, I finally cracked it open. Turns out, it was just the right amount of intrigue, witty banter and smoldering looks to keep me […]

It is only unnatural in the sense that there are human beings who can do this sort of thing to other human beings.

Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Anna Waterhouse

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I am woefully behind in both reading and reviewing. It is taking me FOREVER to read these days and when it takes weeks to read something I have zero interest in reviewing it right away. So, here I am, ages after reading this book, trying to come up with 250 words to say about it. KimMiE posted a great review in February, and I strongly suggest skipping this and just reading hers. Seriously. No stranger to Sherlock Holmes re-tellings, I have often mentioned in other reviews how […]



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