Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Everyone had strengths. And weaknesses. The important thing was to recognize them. And not expect something from someone who didn’t have it to give.” (CBR Bingo #11)

All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Gamache #16) by Louise Penny

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Through the first fifteen books in the Inspector Gamache series there is only one book I’ve rated five stars, A Trick of the Light. It’s a doozy of a book, and it dug deep into how characters cope with trauma, addiction, and stress, and any number of other forces that would separate us from our best selves. When I finished All the Devils Are Here, the 16th book in the series, I had my first impulse to rate one of these five stars since the […]

“Love couldn’t solve everything, but without love, there was nothing to solve.” (Bingo #3!)

40-Love by Olivia Dade

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I think I laugh the most whenever I read an Olivia Dade romance, her humor hits all the right notes for me. Even when I’m not expecting a laugh, Dade delivers them through her characters who are achingly self-aware, or sometimes not. Following a meet-cute involving a runaway bikini top and the need to keep from flashing nearby children, we get the story of Tess and Lucas. Lucas, 26, a former top-level tennis pro now giving lessons at a Florida resort, fled there after the […]

I finally get around to actually reading Olivia Dade

Teach Me by Olivia Dade

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4.5 stars CBR13 Bingo: Rec’d (by Emmalita, Narfna and FaintingViolet) Official book description: Their lesson plans didn’t include love. But that’s about to change… When Martin Krause arrives at Rose Owens’s high school, she’s determined to remain chilly with her new colleague. Unfriendly? Maybe. Understandable? Yes, since a loathsome administrator gave Rose’s beloved world history classes to Martin, knowing it would hurt her. But keeping her distance from a man as warm and kind as Martin will prove challenging, even for a stubborn, guarded ice queen. Especially when she begins […]

“I go to the grave shared by my father and Jimmy. The question I get most, the one I hate, is why I went into his room. And why I helped people. Again and again, ‘Why did you do it? How?’ The answer is, How could I not?” (Bingo#1)

All the Young Men: a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South by Ruth Coker Burks, Kevin Carr O'Leary

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I read a lot of memoirs; I love listening to someone tell me their story. All the Young Men tells Ruth Coker Burks’ story as a young single mother in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who finds herself driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis and becoming an activist in the fight against AIDS. Coker Burks story starts in the way that I think many of us hope we would respond – while visiting her friend recovering from cancer surgery, she notices nurses drawing straws to […]

“If this is the last decision I can ever make, at least it is my decision. Let me go, Alyosha. I am not afraid.”

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

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One of our #CannonBookClub prompts asked if there’s any special power in taking a known story and envisioning it in a new way, and for me the answer is a resounding yes. Whether its something along the lines of Longbourn where characters who are merely set dressing in the original tale are given the limelight or something like The Bear and the Nightingale where history and folktales are put into a blender, metaphorically, and something new arrives there is more often than not an engaging […]

Another story I didn’t know existed, a perfect author for the Gateway square

A Good Heretic (Wayfarers #0.5) by Becky Chambers

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There are a handful of authors that I am simply delighted Cannonball Read has put on my reading radar. Becky Chambers is absolutely one of those. Her The Wayfarers series helped to cement for me my enjoyment of space based science fiction, while simultaneously reaffirming that one doesn’t need to rely on the hero’s journey in order to write excellent genre fiction. My favorite genre books are all character driven, and that is just the kind of exploration and survival stories at which Chambers excels. […]



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