Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Books that come out of nowhere to become favorites

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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 As a reader, I find few things more satisfying than stumbling upon a novel expecting nothing but a pleasant diversion and instead falling completely in love with it. My husband found A Gentleman in Moscow in a Little Free Library and took it home because the description and the cover appealed to him. (I probably wouldn’t have picked it up, though it does have a nice cover.) He described the story as “charming” and recommended I try it. We were both thrilled that I was […]

Five stars for The Five. Plus, a quadruple BINGO and board blackout!

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

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CBR15 BINGO (QUADRUPLE BINGO AND BINGO BLACKOUT): History, because it tells the true, untold history of the women murdered by Jack the Ripper Vertical bingo: South America, Dwelling, Hold Steady, Strange Worlds, History Horizontal bingo: History, Bodies, Bodies, Adulthood, Edibles, Europe Diagonal bingo: History, Queer Lives, North America, Violence, Sex 4 corners and center square: South America, Sex, Europe, History, North America I’m a fan of historical true crime stories, particularly those that happened before the 20th century; however, I have never read a book […]

The brain can go wrong in some crazy ways

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

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CBR15 BINGO: Strange Worlds, because these essays take you into the very strange world of the mind BINGO: Strange Worlds, Queer Lives, You Are Here, Asia & Oceania, Picture This When I studied abnormal psychology in college, my favorite parts of the textbook were those little side-blurbs that described specific cases of people afflicted with weird brain conditions. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat reads a lot like those side blurbs. In this book, neurologist Oliver Sacks (of Awakenings fame), describes 24 […]

A beautiful novel, surprising for its time

Maurice by E.M. Forster

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CBR15 BINGO: Queer Lives, because it focuses on a gay man in Edwardian times BINGO: Politics, Africa, On the Road, Queer Lives, Bodies, Bodies Some spoilers included Maurice may not be E.M. Forster’s best or most famous novel, but it’s a lovely, heart-felt, and surprising story, particularly given the era in which it was created. Written in 1913, the novel wasn’t published until 1971, a year after Forster died. Homosexuality wasn’t decriminalized in the United Kingdom until 1967, so a story about love between men […]

Have a banana, Hannah!

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel

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CBR15 BINGO: Edibles, because it’s about bananas BINGO: In the Wild, Violence, Guide, Asia & Oceania, Edibles The 19-page introduction to Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World is quite interesting. If you know nothing about bananas other than that they are a tasty and easily portable treat (and really, why would you?), you’ll learn some fascinating facts in these introductory pages. First, the banana most widely sold today, and the single most popular variety of fruit in the world, is the […]

I expected too much

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

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CBR15 BINGO: On the Road, because the fig tree at the center of this story travels from Cyprus to London; also, main character Ada is on the path to understanding her family’s history, and Ada’s parents are immigrants from Cyprus BINGO: Hold Steady, On the Road, North America, Guide, Nostalgia I need to stop reading Goodreads reviews that gush over a novel, because they only set me up for disappointment. I wanted to like this novel so much more than I did, because there are […]



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