Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Difficult Women

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox: A Novel by Maggie O’Farrell

by Leave a Comment

Maggie O’Farrell is one of my favorite contemporary writers. She has a great talent for historical fiction (read Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait), and she excels at telling stories of women who find themselves in untenable positions. In The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Esme is a woman who, like Agnes in Hamnet and Lucrezia in The Marriage Portrait, is unusual in ways that make her seem dangerous to those around her. She does not conform to conventional traditional female roles and, as we know […]

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

by Leave a Comment

CBR16 BINGO: Horses, because Gulliver spends several years with the Houyhnhnms, a highly rational race of talking horses Take a nice, English surgeon and send him around the world, where he encounters all sorts of heretofore unknown races, and eventually he’ll come back absolutely hating on humanity. Gulliver’s Travels is so ingrained in popular culture that everyone knows something about it. I can’t remember my first introduction to the story, but it was probably in the form of a children’s comic book or animated special. […]

“Now did you think it all through? All these things will catch up to you…” (Double bingo)

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

by Leave a Comment

Nowhere Book Bingo: From a genre you’ve never read (true crime) CBR16 Bingo: Fiasco (Theranos was a massive fraud and a fiasco) I’ve owned this book since 2020 and am pretty sure I picked it up in an e-book sale because of the many Cannonball reviews I’ve read about it over the years. Not being particularly interested in the tech world or medical science, and certainly, not someone who reads a lot of business news, I didn’t really hear about this case as it was […]

If you are needing some unsettling horror-type reading, here you go

The Night Guest: A Novel by Hildur Knutsdottir

by Leave a Comment

If you’re looking for a book to set you on edge for spooky season, this is it. This short novel from Icelandic author Hildur Knutsdottir is a very quick read full of foreboding and tension. It’s also a commentary on women’s health and mental health and the stigma/lack of attention attached to both.  The novel is narrated by the main character, a woman who I imagine to be in her 30s or so. Odunn (not sure if this is a correct spelling, since it seems […]

Don’t fear the reaper

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer: A SCYTHE Mystery Book 1 by Maxie Dara

by 1 Comment

This is a decent murder mystery featuring “grim reapers” and dead souls. It’s funny at times and includes some colorful support characters who clearly will play a big role in future novels in the series. I found it through a “Book Riot” recommendation. Book Riot is one of those book accounts on FB that pops up in my feed regularly and sometimes makes pretty good recommendations. A Grim Reaper’s Guide was good; not “wow, I can’t wait to read the rest of this series” good, […]

Everything is connected

The Secret Network of Nature: The Delicate Balance of All Living Things by Peter Wohlleben

by Leave a Comment

CBR16 BINGO: And Also, a repeat of the Earth Day square BINGO: Détente, And Also, Scandal, Tech, Rings Wolves in Yellowstone National Park support the beaver population. Salmon help trees grow. Ravens and wolves form an alliance against bears. Peter Wohlleben’s The Secret Network of Nature is filled with fascinating stories about the interconnectivity and delicate balance of our environment. Wohlleben is a German forestry expert who has written several bestsellers, including The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals. Given my […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo