Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I’m not cold, just my habitat

Cold by Tim McCanna

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Cold is different for everyone. Poetry is different for everyone. And in Tim McCanna’s picture book, Cold, we get a lovely, lush illustrated book that has a story within the art as well as complimenting the text that deals with both subjects. The poetry is how the rhyming text with each page gives us a short burst of poetic information about how in cold there is life and how the cold itself is a character that moves about, leading us to the different places the […]

Ice Ice Baby

The Ice Coven by Max Seeck

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Read as part of CBR14Bingo “cold” for multiple reasons: it has “ice” in the title, the cover is a woman standing on a frozen body of water outside of an island covered in snow, and it’s set in Finland in November. All of this shouts: cold cold cold! This is why book bingos are great. I picked up this book in a Target of all places because I read good things about the author. But knowing it was the second in a series, and seeing […]

Turning planets into origami

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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CBR14 Bingo: Cold (the majority of this novel is set in spaaace, which is famously very cold) It would also work for Star and Series.  Official book description: Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade his mind in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. Eighty years ago, Earth was destroyed by an alien enemy. Many escaped, but millions more died. So mankind created enhanced humans ­such as Idris – […]

“It’s time for the world to let queer black boys unpack their shit.”

All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson

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When we had our book club vote for September, I was secretly hoping that All Boys Aren’t Blue would be one of the ones we chose. I was flabbergasted that in November of last year the memoir had a criminal report filed with the Flagler County Sheriff’s office by a member of the Flagler County School Board arguing that the book’s inclusion in three district school libraries violated state obscenity laws because it contained sexually graphic material. It has also been removed from school libraries […]

More

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Frog and Toad - Collected Stories by Arnold Lobel

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J Gaines

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CBR14Bingo – Question: Why are so many Americans obsessed with this book (especially Libertarians and Sovereign Citizens) Common Sense – This is one of those books whose main ideas and arguments I ostensibly know through cultural osmosis. If I had ever read it before, I am less sure, but I have taken a handful of early American classes, so maybe. One of the prevailing ideas that came to me as I read this and thought more about why it holds such a special place in […]

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse by John Joseph Adams & Others

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I’m putting together a new class for work that is supposed to cover cross-cultural perspectives, but also be speculative, but also be relevant to ‘kids these days’, so what better place to start than with an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction specializing in pandemics! Chocked full of terrifying tales, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse includes a variety of authors from different places, cultures, and perspectives all writing about humanity’s deepest and darkest fears. From deadly spores and burning suns to viruses and carcinogenic air, this anthology mines for […]



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