Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Nancy wins!

Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene

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CBR15 BINGO: Hold Steady, because Nancy holds steady until she finds that missing will and saves the day! Note: I read the 1959 edition. A few weeks ago I posted a review of the first Hardy Boys mystery and started a friendly debate about who was better: the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. It had been a long time since I’d read any of these mysteries, but I remember, as a youngster, having a slight preference for the novels featuring the more feminine detective (I’m […]

Chigozie Obioma, you broke my heart

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

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CBR15 BINGO: Africa, because the author was born in Nigeria, and the story takes place in Nigeria Double BINGO! Horizontal: Dwelling, Africa, Relation”ship”, Violence, On the Air Diagonal: South America, Africa, North America, Asia & Oceania, Europe With 20 pages left to read in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen, I suddenly felt a dread about finishing. In spite of tragedy striking at barely the half-way mark of the novel, I still clung to the hope that things could turn out well; yet, all along, I knew […]

Connecting stories and people through music

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

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CBR15 BINGO: On the Air, because these are all stories about music BINGO: Sex, On the Air, Nostalgia, Picture This, Europe Music has always been a complete mystery to me. I was born with zero musical talent, and the idea of creating a new tune out of nothing is so incomprehensible to me, it’s nothing short of magic. I’ll never be someone who can analyze music or discuss musical theory, yet I often find myself in awe when a song or a chord evokes ecstasy, […]

And now I’ll be humming “Brazil” for the rest of the day

Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

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CBR15 BINGO: South America, because Machado de Assis is one of Brazil’s most famous and beloved writers Note: The version I read is a translation by Margaret Jill Costa and Robin Patterson, published in 2023. Note #2: Shout out to my husband, Peter, for recommending this author to me! One of the best things about CBR BINGO is that it prompts me to read books that might otherwise languish on my TBR, such as Dom Casmurro, by Joaquin Maria Machado de Assis. Checking back on […]

Adventure! True love! Sex with monkeys!

Candide by Voltaire

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CBR15 BINGO: Europe, because Voltaire, he is very French It’s been so long since I read Candide that I can’t remember whether I was in high school or college at the time, yet the refrain, “Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” has been stuck in my head like a 1980s Mountain Dew commercial. So when I was looking for a good candidate for the Europe BINGO category, I thought, “Why not revisit Voltaire?” To sum up Candide, a young […]

“A woman’s life is endless work and suffering.”

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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CBR15 BINGO: Asia & Oceania, because it focuses on characters in Korea and Japan Pachinko is the saga of a Korean family that spans 79 years, beginning in Korea in 1910 and ending in Japan in 1989. Being a weighty tome covering five generations, it’s hard to summarize the plot, though the main story begins with Sunja, the only surviving child of a struggling Korean couple who run a boarding house in Busan, Korea. Sunja’s father, Hoonie, has a cleft palate and a crooked leg, […]



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