Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Who What When Where Why and not How of crying

Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears by Brandon Stosuy

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I will start my review of Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears with that I did not read every person’s confession. And second, I was not even 40% into it before I knew what I wanted to say. So, no I have not finished it yet, but my review of four is a 3.7 rounded up and I hope it keeps the same pace. Now, this is despite not reading some of the longer ones, or if the person’s mini biography did not “grab me.” As I […]

This book got canceled because of its author’s online behavior, but I think we should be reading it anyway.

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough

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I just need to write this review. It just needs to happen. I read the book back in APRIL and it is now August. I’ve been letting the whole THING around this book and it getting canceled and review-bombed get to me. This was a book club pick for one of my in-person book clubs, and my friend Alison who picked it definitely picked it in part because it was a controversial book and she likes drama. If you’re not aware of the drama surrounding […]

I Chortled Often

Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

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Best for: Anyone who enjoys wildly random, hilarious, honest musings about life. Especially relevant to those of us in our 40s, as there are some cultural touchstones she references that made me feel like the embodiment of that Leonardo DiCaprio meme where he’s pointing at the TV. In a nutshell: Writer Irby once again brings her special style of self-awareness and observational humor to what I find to be a whole lot of utterly relateable essays. Worth quoting: “Your jam is always gonna sound like […]

It’s All We Need

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

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bell hooks’ The Will to Change wasn’t just a good book in a sense that books can be quantified in such a manner. It was one that shifted my paradigm and also affirmed me in so many ways. As lauded as that one is, All About Love is considered her seminal text and is, to borrow a phrase from current parlance, having a moment. It’s been largely reissued and reintroduced to a new generation of readers. Once I got over what I wanted it to be and appreciated it […]

“Terror and delight sitting next to each other, their feet dangling off the side of a bridge very high up.”

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

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The book: A few weeks before his 42nd birthday, Ross Gay decided to try to write a daily essay on delight, starting on his birthday and ending one year later, when he turned 43. Although he ended up not writing every single day, there are about 100 short essays in here, some only a paragraph, some several pages. They cover all kinds of thing that delight Gay, things you might think of, like hummingbirds or flowers, and sometimes things you really, really might not think […]

“We are dreamers and makers because that is how we forged ourselves.”

All the Things They Said We Couldn’t Have by T.C. Oakes-Monger

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All the Things They Said We Couldn’t Have  is a gorgeous collection of essays and stories centering the joy of being trans. Tash Oakes-monger is a trans, nonbinary British writer. They don’t sidestep the difficulties of being trans in a hostile world, but illuminate the joy and life that comes with existing in the world as your true self. I found myself starting each morning by reading a couple of selections. I find value in joy for its own sake, and it is the reason […]



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