Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Unearthing History

In the Memory of the Forest: A Novel by Charles T. Powers

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Cbr13bingo Landscape, bingo #6 and #7; Cannonball! In the Memory of the Forest was published in 1997, shortly after author Charles T. Powers died. This was his one and only novel, having spent his career as a journalist covering Eastern Europe for the LA Times. I remember reading this novel after it came out and thinking it was amazing, but it has been almost 25 years. Does the novel stand up? Yes, it does. In the Memory of the Forest is a story about Poland’s […]

If Rube Goldberg had written humorous novels…

Cocktail Time by P.G. Wodehouse

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Cbr13bingo Libations, Bingo #5 (Diagonal) I love PG Wodehouse novels, especially the Bertie Wooster/Jeeves series, but this story featuring Uncle Fred, aka Lord Ickenham, is almost as hilarious and entertaining as the Bertie and Jeeves books. Lord Ickenham, in his 50s I think, is the sort of man who knows how to stir up trouble and then orchestrate events so as to calm the afflicted and afflict the calm. In true Wodehouse fashion, there are a number of plots (mostly involving money and love) that […]

Part Fantasy, Part Messianic Fever Dream

Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

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Cbr13bingo Sportsball Here’s one of those rare (for me) cases of the movie being better than the book. Shoeless Joe, the basis for the 1989 Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams, is a decent-ish fantasy swathed in backward looking heteronormative tropes where a beleaguered white messiah-figure brings redemption to all around him. The parts of the story that interested me involved the baseball field and the players from the past who were resurrected when main character Ray Kinsella built it in his cornfield. Unfortunately, those […]

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

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Cbr13bingo Cityscape, bingo #4 Row 1 The Pulitzer-Prize winning novel All the Light We Cannot See, set during WWII, is the story of two teenagers who share an unusual connection. Marie-Laure Leblanc is blind and trying to survive the war in St. Malo, France. Werner Pfennig is an orphan with a genius for math and engineering in Zollverein, Germany. While they are on opposite sides of the war, they share a love of science, knowledge, and the world. Yet when we meet them, during the […]

“…wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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Cbr13bingo Travel This short, internationally acclaimed novel reads like a parable. The Alchemist is the story of a young man, simply known as “the boy”, in his quest to find his treasure. Similar to other literary quests or odysseys, the young man will encounter those who help him as well as obstacles along the way, but it is the internal journey he takes, the things he learns, that matter most. The Alchemist is a very spiritual book that emphasizes the connectedness of all things and […]

“There isn’t anything wrong with love. There isn’t anything embarrassing about love.”

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

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Cbr13bingo They/She/He Just read this novel. It’s incredible. I read it within 24 hours and was crying at the end. This is a YA novel, but I want every adult I know to read this powerful story of a trans teen who struggles to love himself. As a result, all of his relationships are strained. Felix Ever After (2020) is a National Book Award winner, a Stonewall Honor Book and a Time magazine Best YA Book of All Time. It provides a much needed perspective […]



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