Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“After all, the Statue of Liberty is an immigrant, too.”

Her Right Foot by Dave Eggers, Shawn Harris

by Leave a Comment

Cbr5bingo Picture this I saw a blurb about this children’s book on July 4 and thought it sounded interesting, and it absolutely is. This is a story about the making and gifting of the Statue of Liberty. While it contains fascinating facts on every page, it is the attention to one detail — the statue’s right foot — that provides a powerful and moving message to the reader.  Her Right Foot is aimed at readers aged 5-9 and contains truly delightful art. It reminded me […]

WHAT in the VICTIM-BLAMEY BULLSHIT

A Soul to Keep by Opal Reyne

by 4 Comments

WHAT in the VICTIM-BLAMEY BULLSHIT did I JUST READ??? Okay, listen, I’m on board with the consensual monster-fucking. No question. I will read ten bajillion versions of the same basic Beauty & the Beast plot where we literally or metaphorically marry the creepy creature, and then discover that that there is actually a soulmate. Great! Gets me every time! I am even fully down for the variations where the monster love interest has totally non-human anatomy – it requires authorial creativity that I enjoy, and […]

Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head

Normal People by Sally Rooney

by Leave a Comment

“He was like a freezer item that had thawed too quickly on the outside and was melting everywhere, while the inside was still frozen solid. Somehow he was expressing more emotion than at any time in his life before, while simultaneously feeling less, feeling nothing.” ― Sally Rooney, Normal People CBR15Bingo: Adulthood CBR15Passport: Books from different countries Connell and Marianne grow up together in the same small town in Ireland. Connell is the nerd and jock who hangs out with the wealthier, more popular kids. […]

The Question of Soulmates

Wolfsong by T.J. Klune

by 9 Comments

The thing about Wolfsong is that it’s a keen example of the best thing about paranormal romance as a genre: it’s a way to explore a deep corner of human nature by coming at it sideways, through a fantasy concept that magnifies the details. This one, in particular, is about what it might mean to have a soulmate. People give this book some flak for the age gap – and I see that, and it didn’t need to be quite this wide, but I can […]

“that mixture of the rational and the visceral that one commonly finds throughout human history”

Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA by Richard English

by Leave a Comment

CBR Bingo: History I’ve been doing a lot of Irish fiction and poetry over the past couple years, and informative as both of those can be about the past, sometimes you just need to read some history, too. So I have been picking my way through this fairly exhaustive history of the IRA from its early days in Ireland’s revolutionary decade up through the immediate post-Troubles era. And between everything else I was juggling, it took me a solid six months to finish this one, […]

The past is never past

Beauty is a Wound: A Novel by Eka Kurniawan

by 2 Comments

Cbr15bingo Asia & Oceania I have never before read a novel quite like Beauty is a Wound. It is a combination of history, myth, magic, spiritualism, violence and absurdity. Set in the fictional Indonesian town Halimunda, Beauty is a Wound is the story of three generations of a family and of Indonesia under Dutch colonialism, Japanese occupation, and the political strife that followed WWII. It is about the greed and selfishness that allows individuals and nations to dominate, use and abuse the objects of their […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo