Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

CBR15 Bingo: North America

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

by Leave a Comment

CBR15 Bingo: North America I’ve been hearing about this book since it came out. So many people I know on the internet and whose opinions I trust have read, reviewed and absolutely loved it. So I feel bad only rating it four stars, but for all that that the story and the characters appealed to me, there was something that kept making me prioritise other things over listening more to the audio book, and I never really fully emotionally connected with this one. There are […]

“You’re going to make me love you, aren’t you?” “I’m sure going to try.”

Scandalized by Ivv Owens

by Leave a Comment

Still reviewing books I read in July. It’s really quite sad that I haven’t been able to get my act together more. Let’s see what I actually remember of this book. Georgia “Gigi” Ross has been in London trying to investigate a sordid news story involving powerful nightclub owners and probable sexual assault and is pretty much exhausted when she’s on her way home to the US. Once her flight gets cancelled, she feels close to a breakdown, especially after discovering that there are no […]

Have a banana, Hannah!

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel

by Leave a Comment

CBR15 BINGO: Edibles, because it’s about bananas BINGO: In the Wild, Violence, Guide, Asia & Oceania, Edibles The 19-page introduction to Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World is quite interesting. If you know nothing about bananas other than that they are a tasty and easily portable treat (and really, why would you?), you’ll learn some fascinating facts in these introductory pages. First, the banana most widely sold today, and the single most popular variety of fruit in the world, is the […]

I expected too much

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

by Leave a Comment

CBR15 BINGO: On the Road, because the fig tree at the center of this story travels from Cyprus to London; also, main character Ada is on the path to understanding her family’s history, and Ada’s parents are immigrants from Cyprus BINGO: Hold Steady, On the Road, North America, Guide, Nostalgia I need to stop reading Goodreads reviews that gush over a novel, because they only set me up for disappointment. I wanted to like this novel so much more than I did, because there are […]

Excellent short story collection

Walking on Cowrie Shells: Stories by Nana Nkweti

by Leave a Comment

CBR15bingo Africa This book was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African writing  This 2021 collection of 10 short stories, Nana Nkweti’s debut work, is a riveting read. Each story is thought provoking, some are shocking, all are brilliantly written. This is the kind of book you could read quickly but it deserves to be savored.  Nana Nkweti is a Cameroonian American writer, and her stories focus on the experience of being a “hyphenated American.” For some who have come to the US from […]

CBR15 Bingo: Politics

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

by Leave a Comment

4.5 stars CBR15 Bingo: Politics (the word is used 18 times over the course of the novel) Official book description: It isn’t much of an island that rises up one moonless night from the depths of the Circle Sea — just a few square miles of silt and some old ruins. Unfortunately, the historically disputed lump of land called Leshp is once again floating directly between Ankh-Morpork and the city of Al-Khali on the coast of Klatch — which is spark enough to ignite that […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo