Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Unfollow” taken to the extreme!

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

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Cbr15bingo Take the Skies/Take Flight — entire story is set on a train trip This might turn out to be the weirdest book I read all year. I’m not sure I even understand exactly what happened, and the meaning(s) of this tale are probably deeper and more complex than my poor brain can fathom, but I did find it very interesting and hard to put down. I’ve read a couple of Helen Oyeyemi’s other books and thought they were excellent. She has a talent for […]

Chet’s jalopy is stolen! It must be a Hardy Boys mystery!

The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon

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CBR15 BINGO: Nostalgia, because who didn’t read the Hardy Boys when they were a child? My husband has a sizable collection of Hardy Boys mysteries from when he was a child. His grandparents gave him this first mystery in the series in 1978 (per the inscription on the title page). He’s often spoken about how there were little notes from his grandmother at intervals throughout the books, indicating that when he reached that page he’d get a dime. Well I read this entire book, God […]

“It isn’t just taking a life that destroys a people. It’s taking their history.”

Thistlefoot: A Novel by GennaRose Nethercott

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Cbr15bingo In the wild (shifters) features characters that are shape shifters Thistlefoot is a story of generational trauma that is part fairy tale and part history. The fairy tale part borrows from the Russian tales of the witch Baba Yaga. The history is that of the Jewish people, specifically the pogroms that occurred in Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century. This is a novel about the violence that destroyed Jewish communities, the fear that feeds that violence, and the vital importance […]

What truth does deception for deception’s sake reveal?

Amoralman: A True Story and Other Lies by Derek Delgaudio

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CBR15 BINGO: Adulthood, because it describes how the author grew into himself and his career Bingo! Take the Skies, Relation”Ship”, North America, You Are Here, Adulthood A couple of years back, a friend recommended (nay, demanded) that I get a free 30-day Hulu subscription so I could watch Derek Delgaudio’s In & Of Itself. I hate signing up for subscriptions to watch one show or movie, but it sounded intriguing and the friend assured my husband and me that we would appreciate it. A show […]

“What sort of man would wish to murder the president of another land? None but a barbarian.”

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

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CBR15 BINGO: Politics, because it addresses U.S. and Belgian involvement in the Congo In 1959, evangelical Baptist preacher Nathan Price takes the word of God to the Belgian Congo, bringing his wife and four daughters with him. Though the mission is supposed to last one year, the family’s stay is extended through the sheer stubbornness and bad judgment of their patriarch and, while the novel spans 30+ years, the majority of it takes place in the few years that Price is actively proselytizing in a […]

“He hated this place. He loved it.”

Babel by R F Kuang

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Bingo: History;  Passport: China Babel is historical fiction stirred with magic, the story of imperialism set in a world just a sidestep from our own told through the eyes of an outsider awakening to harsh realities. We meet Robin as a small boy who has survived a cholera outbreak that has killed his mother and ravaged his birthplace of Canton and is taken to England by his mentor.  His Chinese name is unimportant to Professor Lovell, so we never learn it.   Robin’s skill with language […]



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