Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sometimes a “Hallmark Movie” type of book is just what you need

The Collected Regrets of Clover: A Novel by Mikki Brammer

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Cbr17bingo Rec’d (2 bingos) This book was a staff pick/rec at my local bookstore The Collected Regrets of Clover is a novel about death and grief and about friendship and love. Main character Clover is a 30-something living in New York. She has had a unique connection to death since she was a child, but as an adult she is now struggling with loneliness and grief. A new job and a series of events could potentially take Clover in a direction she has long desired, […]

If you like your coffee with extra saccharine

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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CBR 17 BINGO: Work, because the stories take place in the coffee shop where Kei, Nagare, and Kazu all work Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a collection of four short stories loosely combined into a novel. The characters overlap from story to story, and some incidents in earlier stories come into play later in the book, but for the most part, each chapter stands alone. The Funiculi Funicular, run by husband and wife team Nagare and Kei, appears to be an ordinary cafe, but […]

Creating a language is no joke. Or, maybe it is, because I laughed a lot reading this book.

In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent

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CBR 17 BINGO: Diaspora. The author uses the Jewish diaspora to illustrate the remarkable resurgence of Hebrew as a spoken language. You could also argue that Esperanto speakers form a diaspora. When you think of “invented” languages, you might immediately think of Esperanto, the late-19th century experiment in creating a universal language to bring people closer together. Or you might think about Star Trek geeks going all-in on their hobby by learning Klingon. Or you might ponder J.R.R. Tolkien’s elvish languages, created decades before he […]

“That’s just what translation is…. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases…”

Babel or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution (A Novel) by R.F. Kuang

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Cbr17bingo Black Imagine a world in which a kind of magic exists that is only accessible to those skilled in foreign language, those who are so fluent they dream in those languages. In Babel, RF Kuang immerses the reader in a world that, despite the presence of “magic,” is strangely and sadly familiar. This is a novel about imperialism and racism, but it’s also about friendship and bravery in the face of odds stacked against you. It is a long novel (over 500 pages) but […]

This book is like reading an entertaining action movie

The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold by Ally Carter

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4.5 stars Thank you to Avon and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Official plot summary: Ten years ago, they joined the CIA. Six years ago, he left the game. Five years ago, they fell in love. One year ago, she ran out into the cold with absolutely no intention of ever coming back. And two minutes ago, they woke up, bloody and bruised and handcuffed together in the dark. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know how they got […]

Murderbot takes on a murder mystery

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

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CBR 17 BINGO: Black (see cover) I’d taken a short hiatus from reading Murderbot, but watching the Apple series put me in the mood again. Apparently it did the same for many fans, and probably generated a bunch of new ones, because when I went to my local library almost every Martha Wells novel had been checked out. Fortunately, I had plenty of other BINGO books to read while I waited for my turn to borrow Fugitive Telemetry. This time around, SecUnit is brought in […]



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