Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You’re famous…just nobody knows it.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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CBR12 BINGO: Orange Square (BINGO! Red to Violet) Nearly four decades after after her death, a young black woman, Henrietta Lacks, captures the imagination of Rebecca Skloot, a sixteen year old budding scientist and writer. After a science class discussion on HeLa cells, and their important contributions to modern medicine, Skloot wanted to know more about the woman whose cancer cells were (and still are) part of many major medical advancements. Who was she? Did she have a family? Do they understand the significant role she plays […]

*whistle while you work* (Bingo!)

The Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs by The Walt Disney Corporation

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Without regular access to interlibrary loan, the Music square on the Bingo board caused me great strife…  none of the music related books I wanted to read were available at my local branches and therefore were off limits to me. Then, I stared at my bookshelf and realized I had a book about music sitting right there, in fact, it’s been living on my bookshelves for over 25 years. I’m a Disney fan, and I find the history surrounding the company interesting (why else would […]

Kitchen Staple/Bingo Blackout

I’m Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown

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Cbr12bingo How To, BINGO BLACKOUT I’ve had this book on the shelf for nearly 2 decades. It was published in 2002 (with a version 2 published in 2006), and I’m sure I got it soon after it came out. My husband and I were (and are) great fans of Alton Brown and loved “Good Eats” when it aired. We learned so much from Alton Brown, notably how to make the best chocolate chip cookies and how to make gravy from roux. Brown is an engaging […]

A Steamy Novella that Also Made Me Hungry

Tikka Chance on Me by Suleikha Snyder

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The Pandemic has stolen my ability to focus on long form works, so I went trolling through my digital library to see what I had available in the novella length, thankfully for me at some point I had downloaded Suleikha Snyder’s Tikka Chance on Me. Perfect. I *loved* the first part of this novella. Pinky Grover is a fantastic lead – she’s a feisty, sex-positive Desi heroine that could carry a much larger work on her character’s shoulders. Snyder introduces us via Pinky to Trucker […]

“Memories are always bent retrospectively to fit individual narratives”

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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I don’t know, really, what I was expecting from this book and I’m also not sure that whatever those expectations were that they were met. I was able to watch an author discussion between Mandel and Isaac Fitzgerald hosted by the Greenlight bookstore in the spring when this book was released and I left that experience knowing that the book featured a Ponzi scheme and focused around the 2008 economic collapse, and that a main character died and also that estrangement of many types was […]

“Please tell me people who look like us can have happy endings.”

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

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I have been waiting for this book for months and am extremely happy to report that it does not disappoint. This is only my second Dade book (Teach Me was also highly enjoyable), but I can already say my favorite thing about her writing is how relatable and human her characters are. The two leads in Spoiler Alert are at a point of change in their lives – and actively seeking it – and the layers of their lives that push them towards, and in […]



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