Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“He’s been here one hour, but already he feels like he has never lived anywhere else. And even if he doesn’t know who he was … he knows who he is.” #CBRBingo – UnCannon

The City We Became (Great Cities, #1) by N.K. Jemisin

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I feel like I do this every time I read an N.K. Jemisin book. Part of me wants to give it five stars, but I’m going to hold off until I see where it’s going to end up. I did that with The Fifth Season, too. (And I know when I go to do my re-read, I’m going to up that book to five stars.) I feel like every time I read one of her books, she does something that I’ve never seen before. It’s […]

Video Games and the “Real World”

Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams, Ernest Cline

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Bingo Review 2: Shelfie I honestly have no idea how long Press Start to Play has been on my literal TBR shelf, but it’s been a while. I figured this was as good a reason as any to finally pick it up, especially since I actually broke down and bought a Nintendo Switch Light a few weeks ago. I’ve never been much of a gamer; I didn’t grow up with it really, unless you count the educational stuff like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. I […]

Old toys aren’t discarded: They’re re-loved.

Dragon Meets Boy by Michael Slack

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cbr12bingo Repeat is: Dragon Meets Boy (because that cool purple/violet cover) The title is a direct quote from the Kirkus Reviews of 04/15/2020 Did you a) like Toy Story (especially Toy Story 3)? Or b) Did you cry when (spoiler) Andy gave Buzz and Woody to the little girl? Or c) Think Velveteen Rabbit has a good message? If you said yes, then you know a bit about Dragon Meets Boy and its (somewhat sad) ending. (Other spoiler: Dragon does not have the Rabbits fate […]

The Law School Scam, with a side of beaches

The Rooster Bar by John Grisham

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John Grisham’s 25th legal thriller centers on three law students, Todd, Mark and Lola, who are about to enter their final semester. Unfortunately, their law school, Foggy Bottom, is a bottom tier school charging top tier prices, and once they graduate into a saturated market their degrees may be nearly worthless while their debt will be astronomical.  When a shared personal tragedy causes them to rethink their life choices, they abandon their plan to graduate for one of assumed identities and ‘unauthorized legal practice’ in […]

Problematic nostalgia

The Mountain of Adventure by Enid Blyton

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This is the second Enid Blyton I’ve read this year and this one, like the Adventurous Four, is a nostalgic throwback but with some things that have not aged well. The 1949 novel features a different set of four children than in Adventurous Four, but still follows the same pattern: unsupervised children ‘having an adventure’.  These particular four children are two sets of siblings- Philip and his sister Dinah and Lucy-Ann and her brother Jack.  The four are on a summer vacation in rural Wales, […]

We Don’t Need No Thought Control (CBR Bingo: DEBUT)

Educated by Tara Westover

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God, I was so tempted to tag this as horror. I think since most of us are voracious readers or at least striving to be, education is something that this group would value. In Tara Westover’s memoir of her childhood and subsequent awakening to its deficits, education is a four-letter-word. Her Mormon parents don’t home-school their children so much as teach them the bare minimum to get by in life, rejecting not just education, but also doctors and government intervention of most kinds. This was […]



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