Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To tell the truth, the whole truth

Muhammad Najem, War Reporter: How One Boy Put the Spotlight on Syria by Muhammad Najem

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cbr17bingo Diaspora (this could be culture, but he upheaval of the Syrian people unfortunately fits.) Sadly, this book, Muhammad Najem, War Reporter: How One Boy Put the Spotlight on Syria, is nonfiction. I say sadly as nobody, let alone children and teenagers should have to go through what he did. Muhammad Najem, Nora Neus and Julie Robine gathered their talents and told the story of Muhammad as he risked not only his life, but the lives of his family, friends and neighbors. He wanted to be […]

To Tuck or Not to Tuck or how to Survive BeerGate

Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer by Dylan Mulvaney

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cbr17bingo TBR  A while back, I texted a friend about a book I was going to read. It was out of my usual read because it was not a graphic novel, it was nonfiction and it was for physically and mentally adults. It was Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer by Dylan Mulvaney. My friend told me to let her know how it turned out. My first comment was, “Well, it didn’t stink.” And I said that with love. I expected something preachy and […]

Adopt from the Shelter for Slightly Magical Pets. It’s magically mischievous

Hocus and Pocus and the Spell for Home by A.R. Capetta

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cbr17bingo  Purple (cover) Recently I said in another review you can judge a book by its cover. Sometimes there is something about it that lets you know it is going to go in X direction (or XXX as a recent coloring book with an Alice from Wonderland in a dress so short you can tell if she was a natural blond or not). Thankfully the cover of Hocus and Pocus and the Spell for Home by A.R. Capetta and illustrator Charlene Chua tells a radically […]

And the quips just keep on coming

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

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I thought the whole thing about millennials was that we don’t get what we want. The houses, the jobs, the financial freedom. We just go to school forever, then bartend ’til we die. ― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation Bingo square: Work The main character’s job is her identity, and she reckons with what it means to have the career you want and feel unfulfilled. Poppy and Alex are best friends. After meeting during freshmen orientation week, they don’t see one another until […]

When You See the TV Glow

Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante

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Read as part of CBR17 bingo: TBR The trans experience is messy. It’s muddled. It has no straight (heh) line. There is little synthesis of other persons trans experiences. To paraphrase a famous saying about autistic folk: if you’ve met one person that’s trans, that means you’ve encountered only one trans experience. And I think that’s what Hazel Jane Plante is going for with this one. A beautiful, painful capturing of a friendship that meant more, it’s a reminder that trans people tell these stories […]

“Life was very different when you walked through it.”

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

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CBR17 Bingo: Green – Behold, the cover! Recently-retired Harold receives a note from his friend Queenie, who he has not seen in twenty years, to inform him that she is dying, and sets out to walk the length of England to go and see her, in the belief that as long as he walks she will not die. This is a pilgrimage across England, but internally it is also a pilgrimage of Harold’s self, in which he comes to terms with the many things that […]



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