Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Nice illustrations and wisdom to help calm the mind

Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury

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CBR 15 BINGO: Guide, because this is a guide for calm. (The dedication reads, “This book is dedicated to everyone who gets lost.”) I was given a copy of Big Panda and Tiny Dragon for Christmas last year, and I opened it with some trepidation. My last foray into self-help territory didn’t go well, if you recall. However, I was pretty sure I could at least finish this one, given that it includes cute pictures of a panda and a tiny dragon. Self-help isn’t really […]

Never Forget

Maus A Survivor’s Tale Vol. I: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Maus A Survivor’s Tale Vol II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman

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Cbr15bingo history Maus is a highly acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning (1992) 2-volume graphic novel that made the news last year as the subject of a book banning in Tennessee (for bad words and a naked female mouse. Really.) Maus is about the Holocaust. Writer/illustrator Art Spiegelman interviewed his own father about what happened to him and their family in Poland during WWII. The Spiegelman family, like so many other Jewish families, was practically wiped out due to Nazi Germany’s extermination camps. In writing about this, […]

I’m not gonna lie. I came for the “monsters.”

Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovations at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

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CBR15 BINGO: North America, because Thomas Dent Mütter was an American physician, and his museum is located in Philadelphia, PA. When I heard there was a book about Thomas Mütter, I knew I had to read it. Some years ago I visited the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, which is a museum of medical history that “displays its beautifully preserved collections of anatomical specimens, models, and medical instruments in a nineteenth-century ‘cabinet museum’ setting.” A quick walk through the museum’s site should give you an idea […]

…what terrified him even more was that he trusted her. And he didn’t know what that meant about himself.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

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CBR15 PASSPORT (Stamp #11: Different Genres, High Fantasy)                                                                          CBR15 BINGO (Violence square: super violent gladiator situation/also the inner turmoil of a young woman trained to be violent from childhood) Not to get too spoilery, but it has become apparent that all three of Maas’ book series (Crown of Thorns […]

Murder most delicious

Blackmail and Bibingka by Mia P. Manansala

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CBR Bingo Square: Edibles I love cooking, and I love murder mysteries, so I’m always happy when those two things coincide. Pushing Daisies had all that pie, Recipes for Love and Murder is very fun, etc etc. So I’ve also enjoyed Mia P. Manansala’s series focusing on Lila Macapagal and her Filipino family, particularly as audiobooks. Blackmail and Bibingka is the third in the series, and Lila, the baker-slash-mystery-solver, seems to finally have her life in order: the coffeeshop she opened with her best friend is doing great, […]

Here’s an interesting moment in any friendship. That time when one person has revealed something essential about themselves and the other must decide if they can accept it.

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

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CBR15PASSPORT: (Stamp #10: Different Genres, Horror) CBR15BINGO: (Strange Worlds square: Lavalle specializes in infusing strange worlds into the real world.) I read Lavalle’s The Changeling a handful of years ago when it first came out. Like that novel, Lone Women is a story about something very essential wrapped up in a mixed genre blanket of fairy/folktale, horror, and in this case, western. While The Changeling was about postpartum depression and what it means to be a parent, Lone Women is, as the title implies, about […]



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