Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Clouds All Form a Geometric Shape

Boom Town by Sam Anderson

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Bingo square: Sportsball I’ve never been to Oklahoma City. If you’d asked me before I read this book what I knew about it, I think I would have had trouble thinking of a single thing beyond tornadoes and the Oklahoma City bombing. I have zero interest in professional basketball, so I’m not even sure I knew they had a team. Thank goodness for the Sportsball square in Bingo, otherwise I never would have read this. Boom Town is the entire story of Oklahoma City, from […]

“Failure cannot be understood in theory, only in practice, sometimes over and over and over again.”

James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes by James Acaster

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Cbr13bingo Free! Bingo #2 – diagonal I received this book as a gift from my husband last year because we are big fans of British panel shows and comedian James Acaster, who is all over them. Look at me reading another memoir, my fourth in a row!! This one is clearly different from the previous three in that it is by a male and it is comedic. James Acaster is a thirty-something British comedian, perhaps not terribly well known in the US but a popular […]

“…loving Blackness enough to see its assets so that dark children matter.” Dr. Bettina L. Love

Hair Story by NoNieqa Ramos

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I’m having a hard time explaining just how much I loved this book, but I’m going to do my best. First off, Hair Story is own voices written & illustrated, and both the author, NoNieqa Ramos, and the illustrator, Keisha Morris, include their own hair stories at the back of the book, which was a lovely surprise.     Second, do you see these illustrations? The texture and colors and patterns and perfection of them?  You can see the love in that grandmother’s face, the joy in […]

“You know who that bird reminds me of? You.” Her expression changed, and he didn’t know what he’d said wrong. Then he saw that the change was caused by Dicey trying to hold back laughter. “I was thinking how much it was like you.”

A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt

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In One Word: Redemptive Cannonball Read Bingo Square: Old Series So far, Jeff is a boy at school, who plays guitar and sings and has begrudgingly caught Dicey’s eye. This book takes us back in time in Jeff’s story, and we learn how he and his father came to live in Crisfield. It was a really interesting take on the series, to focus on Jeff (who we just met in the second book, and has so far been of periphery interest to Dicey the main […]

Sheep go “KERBOOOOOM!”

Before & After by Matthew Thomas

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Bingo 16: Fauna So for me, this book is basically what Good Omens would have been had it been set in 1999 (ie end of the world/millennium references abound) and written by Terry Pratchett exclusively. I have nothing against Neil Gaiman, but he definitely has the darker tone and less openly funny humor (ie no humorous footnotes). Before & After is essentially Good Omens, except it stars an approximately 500-year old history professor who may have used to the name Nostradamus in his earlier years, […]

Girlhood, friendships, and lies that go too far

We Run the Tides by Vendela Vida

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Bingo: landscape I have a soft spot for stories about teenage girls, even more so when they’re written for an adult audience. I suppose it is a self-indulgent subject, but I really enjoy reading about the inner lives of girls and their friendships. One of my favorite novels in this little genre is Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, which is so honest and incisive that it was a bit painful to read. Vendela Vida has a similar ability to expose the inner workings of teenage female […]



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