Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

GBBO Romantasy Meringue

A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J. Penner

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Bingo 15 :White Notice the color of the title text? And few splashes of said color elsewhere? Ok then. However, if you want to be more creative about it, white is often represented as the absence of color, which could be argued to be a metaphor for the total absence of substance in this novel. So, there’s that too. Now to be absolutely clear, the absence of substance is exactly what I needed when I picked this up. I needed a palate cleasner from something […]

“I am given no voice in decisions or plans!” but she wants one

Elusive by Genevieve Cogman

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Bingo 14: Citizen Elusive is part 2 of a trilogy that re-imagines some things about the French Revolution. It’s definitely fiction, but given the historical context of citizens trying to take back power from the elite which is a theme in the novel in more ways than one, I argue this counts. A major part of the fiction is the addition of the (former?) maid Eleanor to the Scarlet Pimpernel and his crew, and the addition of vampires (Marie Antoinette might still be around in […]

“Off On An Interesting Adventure”

Flirting with Danger: The Mysterious Life of Marguerite Harrison, Socialite Spy by Janet Wallach

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CBR17 Bingo: Borders – Marguerite crosses the borders of many countries during her work as a journalist and spy, but also crossed the boundaries that constrained women in this era in both her work and her personal life. After being widowed young, Marguerite Harrison plunged into work as a journalist, but her charm and her adventurous spirit leads her into a more covert role as a spy. My understanding of the history of American spycraft is mostly limited to the hijinks of the OSS during […]

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 […]

Couldn’t Tell You What I Just Read

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

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Bingo: White The Buddhists say that wisdom may be attained by reaching the three marks. The first is an understanding of the absence of self. The second is an understanding of the impermanence of all things. The third is an understanding of the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience.” It took me 90 minutes to read Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation and I can only give the briefest of synopses: it is a story about a marriage that comes together then falls apart due to an […]



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