Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

How to teach your kids to build a “better, fairer, stronger world”

How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes by Melinda Wenner Moyer

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CBR13Bingo: Pandemic Because if there’s anything I learned during the pandemic, it’s parenting my little gremlins is hard work and I need all the help I can get! While I wouldn’t consider myself a stellar parent by any measure, I enjoy reading about parenting studies and generally try to do my best for my kids. So I picked this up not expecting to learn too much new information, only to be completely gobsmacked by how much of my general liberal parenting knowledge was completely wrong – […]

“Chaos seems to follow you around like a lap dog.”

How Sweet It Is by Dylan Newton

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CBR13Bingo: People This book is adorable and hilarious, full of over-the-top rom-com hijinx and basically cute as heck. It’s set during the fall in a small town in western NY and has a delightfully cozy (and a little bit spooky) vibe. Definitely perfect to go with a pumpkin spice candle and some warm apple cider! “Throwing parties is like blowing a soap bubble—fun, but quickly over and forgotten. But event planning is like crafting a sphere out of iridescent glass and gifting it to someone […]

The premise is the only redeeming feature and even that’s somewhat derivative

The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen

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Bingo 12: Free I’m going to be up front about this: if this hadn’t been a free download from the Tor.com book club, I’d have been annoyed to have spent any money on it. The story is predictable, and the plot is both mostly lacking and also incomplete. I am reminded in a way of the Goosebumps series; I never really got into that as a kid in part because of how the endings were often not entirely endings. Same problem here. The Infinite Noise […]

Breaking Free from Zebra Thinking

50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food by Susan Albers

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CBR Bingo – Self Care 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food is a helpful book by Susan Albers to assist those of us who overeat from stress, emotional difficulties, loneliness, or other reasons. I chose this book as my self-care Bingo book as I am in the process of losing weight and I am a big-time stress/emotional eater. I needed some guidance on how to handle my issues without automatically turning to food. Food is indeed a pleasure and can be used for comfort, […]

“Is there anything more beautiful than living light?”

Phosphoresence: On awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark by Julia Baird

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CBRBingo:  Self-help This book has a glorious cover that is well-matched to the contents.  Julia Baird – historian, journalist, TV presenter – blends  personal experience, scientific research, philosophy and theology to outline her argument that instead of asking how we stay happy we should ask “how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom when the world goes dark, when we are, for instance, overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain?”. Beginning with a discussion of literal phosphoresence – light released by natural substances […]

“Why are things the way they are?”

The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas

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Mattis and his older sister Hege live in a lakeside cottage in a rural community in Norway. Hege, a 40-year-old spinster who has taken care of Mattis all her life, is earning a meager living by knitting sweaters, while Mattis is unable to contribute due to his mental disabilities. When the lumberjack Jorgen moves in with them, it becomes clear that they can’t go on as before. This is a deceptively simple story, with a straightforward plot and only a handful of characters. Mattis’s inner […]



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