Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

…seeing the way fiction can bleed into the world and leave a mark on someone’s skin.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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HALF CANNONBALL! CBR BINGO: Verse Square (BINGO! Rec’d to Time) (This book is part of the “Mandelverse” along with Station Eleven and Glass Hotel: pandemics, Shakespeare, violins, stories, airports, and heartbreaking connections between seemingly disparate characters.) I’m so late to the party on this one, but I’ll add mine to the pile of reviews. This small little novel holds four big stories spanning just as many centuries. In the early 20th century, a young man whose brother will inherit the family estate in England is unceremoniously sent to Canada after […]

“I want you to see me. That’s why I shine like this.”

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa

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CBR Bingo: Recommended When I was in the early days of my summer of Irish fiction, I visited a couple friends in DC and one of them passed off her copy of this novel to me. “When you get a moment, I think you’ll like it. It’s an easy read, but not a dumb one–more like where you feel better at the end of it.” Since I read plenty of serious and/or bleak stuff, I’m always grateful for a recommendation like that, but it took me […]

The greatest true-life adventure story ever told, now with more photos

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander, with photos by Frank Hurley

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CBR 14 BINGO: Bodies, because the men on this ship were pushed physically beyond all reasonable limits, and also because one member of the expedition team lost all the toes on one foot. Also, it involves crossing bodies of water. BINGO: Snake, Shadow, Cold, Rec’d, Bodies In 2019, I read Alfred Lansing’s Endurance about Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated 1914 Antarctic expedition, and it became one of my favorite books of the year. Shortly after, this book by Caroline Alexander, a companion piece to a 1999 exhibition […]

Penguins make me happy. Cute drawings make me happy. This book is a winner.

Penguins and Other Seabirds by Matt Sewell

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CBR14 BINGO: Cold, because penguins are usually found in cold places (but not always, like those crazy Galapagos penguins, hopping back and forth over the equator like they do). As I may have mentioned, I’m a big fan of penguins and books about penguins. Many people know this about me, so one day a coworker sent me a message saying she was mailing a little book she found that I might like. She didn’t say what it was but mentioned that she “has to mail […]

Hell Is Empty

The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

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Read as part of CBR14 Bingo: verse. This book frequently quotes the “Hell is empty, all the devils are here” passage from “The Tempest”, as well as verses from a fictional short story inspired by that passage.  This left me with the same feeling I felt when I first read Tana French’s debut novel In the Woods: good but I feel like it’s missing something to prevent it from being great. I really liked the first half of the book: getting to know the three POV characters, […]

Do People Who Ban Books Even Read Them?

James & the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

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This book was in the “Banned Books” display at my library, so I picked it up on my way to the check-out counter. The last time I read James and the Giant Peach, I think I may have been in the 4th grade, so this was really like reading it for the first time. As an adult, I have to say the descriptions of the child abuse inflicted on James by his aunts was really disturbing, so I was shocked to find out that’s not why […]



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