Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“She believed that all people unless impeded wanted family, needed family, that family was what life was for”

Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin

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Bingo: Family. The entire book revolves around the protagonist’s families and her place in them. Polly is happily married to her husband Henry and a content mother. Her own family is patrician and oppressive, a very tight unit that has enfolded Polly her whole life. In both of her families Polly is reliable, uncomplaining, giving, and steady. Which makes it all the more surprising when she finds herself in a passionate love affair with an artist named Lincoln. The intense love between Polly and Lincoln […]

“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 […]

FaeFae

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

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Read as part of CBR17 bingo: diaspora. The story follows a woman born-and-raised in Georgia who goes to Ireland for the duration of the book to investigate her sister’s death. It also has a plot of an alien race who is living on earth in diaspora.  I’ve been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I found this one on a subreddit recommending books like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Make no mistake, the author has definitely seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer more than once. She may even owe […]

His Holiness

Hope by Pope Francis

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Read as part of CBR17 bingo: white cover Will preface this by saying I know a lot of people have suffered religious trauma, especially at the hands of the Catholic Church. This review is not meant to convert or convince you that your pain is not real. I also know that faith is not for everyone. This is not meant to be an evangelizing post. Despite my frustrations with the Roman Catholic Church, I had always been a fan of Pope Francis. I believed he […]

I guess I’m rooting for the serial killer

Murder for the Modern Girl by Kendall Kulper

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CBR17Bingo: “Borrow” – because I borrowed it from the library. Murder for the Modern Girl (2022) by Kendall Kulper is another book I picked up after it was recommended to me by someone in my local book club. I thought it was original and unique. It was a quick read and kept my interest. Although there are fantastical elements to a couple of the characters in this book, the story still felt grounded. In fact, the fantastical elements really made the characters more interesting, and they […]

Bewitched

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Bingo row 3 – B In my work circles, there’s a story that goes around sometimes where someone died in the automatic rolling stacks and that’s why the archives/records room has manual rolling stacks with a crank and not a button. Is that a story used to justify cheaper rolling shelving? Maybe, but it seriously happened to someone my friend’s friend knew (which I know makes it sound even more like an urban legend). There is a scene in the Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia where […]



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