Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Officially the weirdest book i have read in the past 8 years.

The Obsoletes by Simion Mills

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CBR11 Bingo — Youths! Until last week, I always thought that the weirdest book I would read during the Cannonball Read era would be Grasshopper Jungle. What could be stranger than a gigantic praying mantis army that wipes out civilization while a few teens figure out the truths about their sexuality in an underground bunker while dancing to the Rolling Stones? Well, I’m here to tell you that I found something stranger. This book is much, much weirder. Darryl and Kanga are twin brothers who live […]

Part X-Files and part World War Z? Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

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My local bookstore is really great about making recommendations for books I may otherwise have never known about. (You may remember, this was how I discovered Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle.) There’s nothing better than popping by the store and checking out what’s new and which employees have left rave reviews for titles and authors I might enjoy. When I dropped by last Friday, I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular. But when I started to browse the SciFic/Fantasy section, I saw a book with a note […]

“So what’s a few plane crashes in the name of a good night’s sleep?”

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What if I told you that I just read a great book about a teenaged boy named Ariel? Ariel lives in an unnamed, war-torn country, and has just turned 14. On his 14th birthday, tragedy strikes, and Ariel finds himself the sole survivor in his village. Wouldn’t his tale about his travels with soldiers and regular families, about the horrors of the refuge camp, and about his new, adoptive family in West Virginia sound like something you might want to read? Or how about if […]

In which I decide I’m taking a break from my Cannonball boyfriend. But I’ll be back.

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Andrew Smith is pretty much my Cannonball boyfriend. I loved Grasshopper Jungle so, so much. The balance between its absolute insanity and the realness of its characters hooked me quickly and didn’t let me go for the entire story. And Winger? That broke my heart, took it out, and stomped on it…and yet, still left me with a glimmer of hope. I did a little happy dance when I heard it was getting a sequel, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. […]

Andrew Smith is my spirit animal.

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My god. This book. This book is 400 pages of ridiculous, teenage boy bravado and sex. It’s hilarious and real and heartwarming. And then the next ten pages are tense and unnerving. And the last ten pages? They made me weep. I’m actually starting to tear up again just thinking about them. Last year, I read the outlandish Grasshopper Jungle. And I knew that Andrew Smith was a writer who understood HOW to write a teenage boy. It wasn’t just that he remembered being a teenage […]

Giant bugs, tainted corn, and half-cannonball!

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Recently, bunnybean and I discovered an awesome new (newish?) book store really close to our house. It’s on a weird little side street, and we had no idea there was a whole little world down there — coffee shop, Lebanese cafe, and a book store. And we found out that Sasha and Malia shop there, and that their dad does, too. Really, it’s a great little store. One of my favorite things there is that all of the employees make notes on all of the […]



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