Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Four legs good, two legs bad”

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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Nowhere Books Bingo 25: Banned Book Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Cover featuring an animal On Manor Farm, somewhere in England, an old boar gathers all the animals in the barn and makes a powerful speech about how animals suffer at the hands of humans and should rise up and take power for themselves. Shortly after his death, the animals of Manor Farm do just that – they violently fight back when Farmer Jones and his farmhands try to control them and chase the farmer, his […]

A complicated mix of a story

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

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Black Cake is a novel that I’ve seen favorably reviewed over the past few years, and according to its cover, has been made into a Hulu series. I can understand why Hulu would be drawn to this story. Black Cake involves colonialism, racism, generational misunderstanding and trauma, and resilience. The novel itself is set up with alternating points of view, the most compelling being that of Eleanor Bennett. She has died and left behind for her children a recording in which she reveals astounding secrets […]

“I can be brave. I can be anything for noodles.”

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

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4.5 stars Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Water words Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling, both with her academic subjects at Stanford and her diving. While physically fully recovered from a bad accident a year ago, Scarlett has a block that prevents her from even attempting the type of dive that had her hospitalised and having to go through several surgeries to fix her broken body. She needs to get her grades up if she wants to get into med school, and she has reluctantly agreed to go […]

“I must make up my mind which is right – society or I”

Et dukkehjem (A Doll's House) by Henrik Ibsen

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I don’t know if a spoiler warning for a nearly 150-year-old play is necessary – but I will be revealing significant plot points when writing about this historical drama, so if you want to remain unspoiled, go read the play (it’s only three acts, it’s a relatively quick read) or watch a dramatisation, and come back when you’re done. Nora and Torvald Helmer are a middle-class couple living in Christiania (what Oslo was named for a few centuries in the before times) in the late […]

I bet this will be a pretty good movie.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

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SPOILERS KINDA SORTA I went into this ready to love it, and mostly did. Grace is a sad and lonely woman whose son and husband have died. She’s convinced herself she’s undeserving of love, or fun, or of much of a life at all. She’s retreated into math (she’s a teacher) and is kinda just waiting for it to be over. Then she gets some crazy news regarding an inheritance, specifically of a small house on Ibiza, left to her by a former colleague she […]

Sit up and take note

Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

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Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic (Sociologist) who also writes for the New York Times and has appeared on The Daily Show. Thick was published in 2019 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It is a collection of essays on race, gender, politics and culture that are meticulously researched and brilliantly argued. This is the kind of collection that bears taking your time to read. McMillan Cottom gives the reader a lot to think about and made me rethink things I thought […]



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