Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Keeping Hope in the Jungle

Sisters Under the Rising Sun by Heather Morris

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The passengers of the Vyner Brooke are pitched from the frying pan to the fire when the ship upon which they have been fleeing the Japanese invasion of Singapore is sunk off the shores of Indonesia. The women and children, musician Norah Chambers and nurse Nesta James among them, must survive in jungle camps until the end of the war. I am continuing my informal journey through the Pacific theatre of World War 2 with Sisters Under the Rising Sun, which chronicles the lives of a […]

This book was soooooo sad I couldn’t finish it

Cilka's Journey (The Tattooist of Auschwitz #2) by Heather Morris

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This book was so intensely heartbreaking. At one point I was listening to it walking around my neighborhood park sobbing. There are some less terrible moments, but they’re followed up with unending sadness and despair. My best friend recommended it to me, and it really is a well written book. I could not finish it though because it made me so freaking sad. She told me it was worth it and I should give it another try, so we’ll see if it makes it back […]

I Will Never Stop Loving Love

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

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Wow. Wow. Wow. This book is. Just. Wow. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the true story of Holocaust survivors Lale and Gita Sokolov who met and fell in love in the infamous concentration camp. “I tattooed her number on her left hand, and she tattooed her number in my heart,” Lale reminisced in an interview with author Heather Morris. While I write this review in the middle of a global pandemic, I am reminded that I am beyond lucky to be safely quarantined […]

Not as moving as you’d expect

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

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A co-worker of mine, who rarely has the patience for reading entire books, told me that he, his wife, and his mother all raced through a book, reading it in less than a week. I was immediately intrigued and put The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2018) by Heather Morris on hold at the library. It’s a New York Times Bestseller with 4.5 stars on Amazon. At heart, Tattooist is a love story between Gita and Lale that occurs between 1942 and 1945 at the German concentration camp located in […]

I need to better screen my recommendations

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

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How do I say this without being unkind … but just because it’s a true story doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good book. In this particular case, I think that has less to do with the story and more to do with the author. In my opinion, Heather Morris just isn’t a good writer. The book – and Lale’s story – really suffers for it. True stories like Lale’s are absolutely vital if we are to avoid repeating history but Morris seems determined […]

The not so distant past

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the Selma Voting Rights March by Lynda Blackmon Lowery with Elspeth Leacock and Susan Buckley

The Tattoist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

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My mother used to watch Lifetime movies (back in the ’90s when they were about battered women and mother’s whose children had drug problems) to remind herself that no matter how bad her day was it could easily be worse. Here are two books to remind you that life isn’t that bad … while also sort of scaring you because- holy shit if 2020 is just 2016: the remix then maybe the below stories aren’t that far in the past and God forbid history repeats […]



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