Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

…a voice on the radio offering a loom on which to spin his dreams.

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

by Leave a Comment

CBR15 BINGO (On the Air square: Lots about radios and radio communication) BINGO! Dwelling to On The Air This is going to be a terrible review. I liked this book too much and generally, when that happens I freeze when trying to review it. Doerr’s book won the Pulitzer nearly a decade ago. I’ve had this book recommended to me countless times and, as is often the case with books everyone raves about, I put it on my virtual TBR pile and forget about it. Why do I […]

Hi, Goldbug…wherever you are.

Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry

by 1 Comment

CBR15 BINGO (Nostalgia square: Read this to my kid a billion times.) Okay. This is going to be more about me than the book, but that’s nostalgia for you. We moved my son to college a few weeks ago. He’s our only kiddo. I’m an official empty nester now so I’m nostalgia-ing all over the place. He loved a lot of the Scarry books but this was his favorite. A superfan of all things vehicle-related, there was never a construction site or road re-surfacing that he […]

Obscure Sex Fantasies Don’t Have to Make Sense

Reckless Heir by Jenika Snow

by 6 Comments

Listen, is this book good? No. Not really. It’s got a weird obsession with a particularly Victorian idea of virginity, and only the loosest possible concept of the physical logistics of real human sex. It’s distracting. These people need, like, so much sex ed. And also probably to see several doctors. And then to hire somebody to come and clean ALL of their furniture. But is this book compelling? Yeah, actually. Like, I get it. Until somewhat recently, I really didn’t see the appeal of […]

To help create a more empathetic society, this should be mandatory reading for middle grade readers (and everyone else, honestly)

Melissa by Alex Gino

by Leave a Comment

CBR15 Bingo: Bodies, Bodies – When Melissa was born everyone assumed she was a boy because of her body. Melissa is a girl but no one else knows she is, as it was assumed at birth she was a boy.  As a result, she was given the name of George.  Melissa is her secret name, admitted only to herself.  We are introduced to Melissa while her 4th grade classroom is reading Charlotte’s Web.  Melissa is moved to tears when Charlotte dies and the boys in […]

How can a novel about dementia be beautiful?

The Swimmers: A Novel by Julie Otsuka

by Leave a Comment

Cbr15bingo Adulthood I have reviewed Julie Otsuka’s previous two novels and loved them both. Otsuka is an amazingly talented writer. Her novels are not long; her sentences tend to be short but deliver beautiful imagery and subtle emotion. They are, as I have mentioned previously, like a pointillist painting in verbal form. Both When the Emperor Was Divine and The Buddha in the Attic, critically acclaimed winners of numerous awards, deal with Otsuka’s family history: immigration from Japan to California and the experience of US […]

“What would happen if I were to leave? No one notices the air they breathe.”

The Air You Breathe: A Novel by Frances De Pontes Peebles

by Leave a Comment

Cbr15bingo South America  Bingo! When I was looking around for a book to fill the South America square on my bingo card, I came across Frances De Pontes Peebles’ The Air You Breathe. NPR’s reviewer compared it to Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend series and said that they tore through this novel in 2 nights. It is similar in some ways to Ferrante’s work, and I likewise finished it within days. The Air You Breathe is a soap opera of a story about friendship and […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo