Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A More Complete Version of Huck Finn

James by Percival Everett

by Leave a Comment

CBR17Bingo – “Black” for the mostly black cover James (2024) by Percival Everett has been everywhere. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and I’d seen reviews and mentions of it all over the place. Barack Obama recommended it as well. So, it was only a matter of time before I got around to reading it. As most people know by now, James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain from the point of view of Jim. I’m pretty sure I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn many, many […]

Music and Love

Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto

by Leave a Comment

CBR17Bingo – “N” for “Not Another Love Song” I found Not Another Love Song (2024) by Julie Soto through my book club. We didn’t actually choose this one for book club, but another book clubber highly recommended it. This piqued my curiosity, and I was able to get it almost immediately on Audiobook. This is a young-adult romance, which I generally enjoyed. Although it wasn’t my favorite, the emphasis on music throughout the story made it feel unique. Gwen Jackson is a child prodigy and self-taught violinist. […]

“I wanted to go home, where I felt safe. It occurred to me, as we continued our journey in silence, that when the first refugees from Earth had arrived on Giant—and, for that matter, on Io—they must have felt much the same.”

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

by Leave a Comment

When I finished The Mimicking of Known Successes a couple weeks ago I knew I wasn’t in love with that book, but that I wanted to continue reading the series to see how Malka Older built out her world and dug into her sapphic Watson & Holmes stand-ins because I had become quite attached to Mossa and Pleiti. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles begins the same way as its predecessor in that we get a prologue from Mossa’s point of view and then the rest […]

Beautiful and Hard to Grasp

Jazz by Toni Morrison

by Leave a Comment

Bingo: Free (taking the place of “Arts” square) I read quite a bit of Toni Morrison many years ago, and remember being dazzled. More than most writers, she could really draw deep feelings out of me. A while back I read a passage from her book Jazz, and it was so evocative it made me buy the book. Like her other works, it’s incredibly beautiful and real and heart-breaking. But it was also a hard book to read because I truly got lost sometimes and […]

There was joy for having arrived, and sorrow for having left, and no way to even pretend this was home.

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley

by Leave a Comment

It’s called the illusory truth effect. If you hear something often enough, for long enough, you’ll believe it. Even if you originally knew that the information was false. ― Natasha Pulley, The Mars House It made January angry too, when people declared that giving someone poor some basic human consideration was the same as being Stalin. It was the kind of argument deployed by people who were saving up for their own private golf course. ― Natasha Pulley, The Mars House CBR17 Bingo: Migrant We […]

A TV Tie-in that Works

The Rise of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee

The Shadow of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee

by Leave a Comment

The Avatar series is one of my favorite animated series of all time. If you doubt me, take a good look at my blog ‘avatar’, which I’ve had since I first signed up for Cannonball Read; maybe a bit familiar, even if a little bit cropped? So, of course, I’m a little excited to hear there will be a new installment to the series soon; pity it’s still quite a while away. And while I’ve tried the comics/graphic novels, they’re little less mature than I […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo