Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Just Getting Along Shouldn’t Be an Ambition”

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

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CBR 13 Bingo: UnCannon Sometimes I read a book that is so deep it’s hard to put it into words for other people to understand. The only response is a directive: “You should read this.” This is how I feel about Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. Rankine’s book is about not just her experience as a Black woman—although it is that as well—but what it’s like to be Black in a racist world, though that is a reductive summary that doesn’t do justice to […]

Where is la joie de vivre?

Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche

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CBR13bingo – Book Club; My local book club is reading classics this year, and our July read is Jules et Jim, the source material for the French New Wave movie Jules and Jim. The introduction and afterword of my edition of this book, and other reviews, told me that it is a celebration of a deep friendship between Jules and Jim and a love triangle where “all parties are free and equal, always loyal to one another”. That what “only counts for the three of […]

“Her pen had a heart inside, and the nib was a wound in a vein.”

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

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CBR 13 Bingo Square: Fauna This is How You Lose the Time War came highly recommended by Cannonballers and all sorts of ‘best of lists’, it’s even a staff pick at Mysterious Galaxy (where it completes a separate bingo square for their summer reading bingo!).  I’m happy to report that it lived up to all the hype.  This is a love story unlike any I have read before, due to the science fiction setting and non-human characters, but it contains classic elements; enemies to lovers, […]

When you think the review says “poet witch” but is actually “poet to watch” you know there might just be magic

The Collection Plate: Poems by Kendra Allen

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cbr13bingo  Flora    Some of the poems in The Collection Plate: Poems by Kendra Allen are straight forward, while others have a more poetic way of speaking. Some poems deal with death, some with life, some with God, some with mothers and some all of that and more all at once. The experiences Allen has had in their life as a person of color and just as a person period, is laid out for all the experience along with them. To say Allen is not […]

While I don’t know it all, I know good poetry, so get on the ball and read y’all!

Whale Day: And Other Poems by Billy Collins

Born in a Second Language by Akosua Afiriyie-Hwedie

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cbr13bingo UnCannon I think we should teach poetry in school but not just the “classics” or what “academics” like, but stuff you WANT to read. Many kids (and adults) hate poetry because it is “girly” (yes, some I was taught was “flowery/girly”) or because is dull (yes, I have fallen asleep more than once while reading some my teacher(s) was forcing on me). And yes, there can be too many rhymes (not that I am complaining mind you, some of my favorites rhymed, but if […]

Nothings Need to Be Heard

Real by Carol Cujec & Peyton Goddard

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It’s not often these days that I read a book and sit with it afterwards wishing there was a way to force every person on the planet to read it, but Real is that book for me. We follow Charity Woods, a non-verbal teenager with Autism who struggles to get people to believe that she is intelligent and can hack it in a mainstream classroom. From the very first paragraph of the book,  “My name is Charity. I am thirteen years old. Actually, thirteen years […]



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