Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Memoir of a Child Star

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

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Wow. This one was brutal. Jennette McCurdy is an excellent writer and draws you in from the very beginning of her memoir. I’ll admit, I had to put this down many times and opt out of reading it at night just becuase I couldn’t stop thinking about the things I read. McCurdy is a survivor of trauma at the hands of the industry and at the hands of her own mother. She paints a vivid picture of the abuse and exploitation she suffered, able to […]

It’s pretty obvious from the get go that Eleanor Oliphant is far from completely fine

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

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CBR15 Bingo: Europe – The book is set in Glasgow, Scotland. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is not a book I would have chosen for myself but it was selected by my book club.  This has been a reoccurring theme since I joined.  I’m glad to be gently pushed out of my comfort zone of almost exclusively reading fantasy, sci-fi, and romance.  It is highly recommended by several Cannonballers so I was excited to start reading.  However, not long after starting I began to question […]

I am the tree and you are the bird. Fly off as you please, you will always come back to sit on my branches.

A Long Way from Douala by Max Lobe

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Pa had brought out our entire stock of beer. Simon, Roger and I had the job of serving. We ran to and fro between the kitchen, the living room and the porch. Our hi-fi pumped out old Makossa hits: our parents’ favorites. A few women neighbors of their generation, also wearing kaba ngondos, had begun shimmying in the empty space at the center of the room. They looked like they were showing off: you can’t dance the Makossa without showing off.” ― Max Lobe, A […]

Do with their death bury their parents’ strife

Brickmakers by Selva Almada

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Chins slightly raised. Eyes locking on eyes. The rest hardly matters: an afternoon of scalding sun, a cloudy night, the middle of a dance hall, the soccer field in the pink evening light, some street in the center of town. Meanwhile, the music is always the same: the panting, the sound of fists, the cracking of knuckles before they land the first blow, the hiss of saliva, the occasional groan when a jab lands right in the liver, and the guys egging them on, always […]

“How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This is how.”

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A very good and heartbreaking book to start the year with. Lemn Sissay’s powerful memoir My Name Is Why details his time in British foster care and shows the casual cruelty of the authoritarian system he was placed in. He had to fight the government for thirty years to get access to his records and he uses the paper trail of comments by his social worker, reports on his progress, and other pieces of the puzzle to show the gaps in the record and how […]

“I own me!” A powerful memoir of healing from trauma

Sex Cult Nun by Faith Jones

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Thanks again to Jake for this Book Exchange gift! I tore right through this one, as it hits a lot of my interest areas and is well written. Sex Cult Nun details Faith Jones’ life growing up in the Children of God/The Family cult during the 80s and 90s. Having watched several documentaries and read about this group before, this was less of a shocking book for me than for someone who has no knowledge about the Children of God. For me, it was more […]



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