Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Stretched on the loom was the huge white cloth of the North. We were the threads.”

Mrs. Mike: A Novel by Benedict and Nancy Freedman

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Cbr13bingo The Wilds, Bingo #3 (four corners and center) Mrs. Mike is a novel based on the true story of Katherine Mary Flannigan, a Boston girl who moved to Canada’s Northwest Territory for health reasons in 1907 and then made a life there. The novel was first published in 1947 and still appears on high school reading lists. I remember the copy we had on our bookshelves when I was a kid, and I remember reading and loving this story when I was about 12 […]

Facts, fiction, and women’s work

The Daring Ladies of Lowell: A Novel by Kate Alcott

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Cbr13bingo Machinery The Daring Ladies of Lowell is  a work of historical fiction set in a textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1832-33. In addition to including much historical fact about women’s working conditions and life at the mill, it also involves a love story and a murder mystery taken from real life.  Kate Alcott (pen name for Patricia O’Brien) takes her readers into the world of her fictional heroine Alice Barrow as she begins work at the mill, gets to know her fellow workers in […]

“Failure cannot be understood in theory, only in practice, sometimes over and over and over again.”

James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes by James Acaster

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Cbr13bingo Free! Bingo #2 – diagonal I received this book as a gift from my husband last year because we are big fans of British panel shows and comedian James Acaster, who is all over them. Look at me reading another memoir, my fourth in a row!! This one is clearly different from the previous three in that it is by a male and it is comedic. James Acaster is a thirty-something British comedian, perhaps not terribly well known in the US but a popular […]

A Pandemic Diary and a Chronicle of Grief

This Will All Be Over Soon: A Memoir by Cecily Strong

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Cbr13bingo Fauna, Bingo #1 (Flora to Fauna) I’m on a roll with memoirs, this being my third in a row. Cecily Strong of SNL fame spent 2020 the way many of us did — holed up at home trying to get through the early stages of the pandemic. She and a couple of friends left NYC for a house rental in a more remote area of New York where she struggled with fear of the virus and the loss of people close to her. Yet […]

This will be one of my CBR13 favorites

Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life From Scratch by Erin French

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Cbr13bingo Flora I would guess that fewer than 5% of the book reviews I’ve done over the years have been non-fiction, and I can only think of one that had anything to do with cooking, so reading a memoir about a chef (even though she calls herself a cook, not a chef) would seem way outside my area of interest. And yet, this memoir is probably going to be one of my CBR13 favorites. It is an incredible story of resilience in the face of […]

Remembering

Rememberings: Scenes From My Complicated Life by Sinead O’Connor

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Cbr13bingo Pandemic This book got a lot of attention when it was released a few months ago, largely because of a story O’Connor tells about Prince which puts him in a none-too-flattering light. As far as I’m concerned though this memoir is more impressive for the honesty and soul-bearing of its author. Full disclosure: I have been a fan of Sinead O’Connor since I first heard the single “Mandinka” in 1987/88. She is one of those female artists who have been kicked around over the […]



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