Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Heavy emotions

The Heavy Bag: One Girl's Journey Through Grief (US Version) by Sarah Surgey

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Books about grief are not new, however, the tone of The Heavy Bag: One Girl’s Journey Through Grief (US Version) has a more European or “classical” feeling to it. This allows things to not be the “same old” we are used to. However, as it does say “US Version” in the title, it might have been adapted to a more American audience or possibly just translated into English (the French title is, Un sac très lourd). The more poetic nature of dealing with the issues […]

It’s beautiful because it’s melancholy. It’s a complicated kind of beauty.

Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

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I am struggling with getting my review of Jenny Holiday’s Canadian Boyfriend right. I really enjoyed it. It’s a romance surfing on big waves of grief and trauma. For a big chunk of the book Mike and Aurora have a quasi employer/employee relationship that some people will, reasonably, consider a hard no. I want to put all this up front, because it’s important information for readers, and I don’t want my whole review to be about the things that might put a reader off of […]

CBR15 Bingo: Europe (triple Bingo)

Folk med ångest (Anxious People) by Fredrik Backman

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#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books from different countries (set in and written by a Swedish author, read in Swedish) CBR15 Bingo: Europe (see description for Passport Challenge) Official book description (translated by me): Folk med ångest (literally translated as People with anxiety, official English title Anxious People) is an unusually messy comedy about a hostage drama during an apartment showing, where a failed bank robber locks themselves in with an overly enthusiastic realtor, two bitter IKEA-addicts, a mean multimillionaire, a sad lady, a very pregnant woman, […]

CBR15 Bingo: North America

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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CBR15 Bingo: North America I’ve been hearing about this book since it came out. So many people I know on the internet and whose opinions I trust have read, reviewed and absolutely loved it. So I feel bad only rating it four stars, but for all that that the story and the characters appealed to me, there was something that kept making me prioritise other things over listening more to the audio book, and I never really fully emotionally connected with this one. There are […]

But of course, in his version, he’d also written a person who would eventually let herself be loved-and could shoot flames out of her fingers.

I am Trying to Break Your Heart by Ruby Lang

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Ruby Lang does a lot of things well, but one of my favorites is the way she creates women who are “kind of an asshole” and the men who love them. In her novella, I am Trying to Break Your Heart, Natalie Chen used to be an asshole but mostly she is trying not to be one now. Ben Nakamura used to be in love with her and he is trying not to be in love with her again. Nat is much more successful than […]

“Love was the destroyer. It made mourners, widows, left misery in its wake. Grief and love were one and the same. Grief was the shadow love left when it was gone.”

Rules of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo

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CBR Bingo – Take Flight This is the final book both in the King of Scars duology, and in Bardugo’s entire Grishaverse, and it wraps everything up very satisfyingly. We were reunited with some favorite characters from across her universe, good triumphed over evil, and love melted even the most grief-stricken and cold hearts. (Sidenote: I’ve chosen this book for the”take flight” bingo category because aerial warfare has a huge role in this world, not to mention two characters who develop the skill of flight […]



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