Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I Wish I Could Read Japanese

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

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One of my friends brought Kitchen back from her study-abroad to Japan in the mid 00s. I was woefully non-diverse in my reading at the time, so my first read of this book in 2008 was mostly vague and unaware. It left no impression. I didn’t even remember I owned it until re-shelving a bunch of books from packing boxes this spring. An MFA and six years of CBR diverse reading under my belt later, this read was a vastly different experience, the most striking of […]

Good Writin’, Bad Thrillin’

Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica

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Clara Solberg’s infant son is only four days old when the police come to her door to tell her that her husband Nick and her daughter Maisie have in a serious car accident. Maisie is unharmed but Nick soon dies, leaving Clara alone with two young children and no income. To make matters worse, Maisie keeps having nightmares about being chased off the road by a ‘bad man’. Clara initially chalks it up to trauma and Maisie being a four year old, but soon other […]

Year of Penny? EXCUSE ME, LIFE of Penny!

The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson

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5/26 UPDATE: if you are curious and want to check out an excerpt, you can do so HERE! Do you miss Happy Endings? If you have seen the show, then the answer is obviously YES SO MUCH OH MY GOODNESS PLEASE COME BACK! If you have not seen the show, then what are you doing? Get out of here and inject all three seasons directly into your eyeballs before returning! Several days ago, the unfortunately canceled Happy Endings turned 10. 10! It seems like just yesterday, Alex […]

When Langston Found Langston

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

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Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome is an interesting look at the late 1940s, Chicago, growing up and literature that was way too short. I would have enjoyed more of the history of the time and seen a bigger connection to the two people called Langston. Still, I enjoyed what I read but, like I said, there needed to be more: more of the history of the times (Why were the black families moving north? Why were the soldiers were coming back? Even the fact that […]

what happens to the torch-bearers, the candle holders, the vigil keepers?

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

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There is so much that I want to tell you about this book, but I won’t. I took so many notes, and placed so many scraps of paper between pages, but I do not want to ruin a single realization for you. Rebecca Makkai has crafted an intricately woven tapestry that you have to witness in its full glory; I do not want to give you a magnifying glass before you have had a chance to first witness the enormity of the project. The Great Believers hits […]

“There is a pay phone by a truck stop near the town of Leonard, Arizona. Sometimes at night it starts to ring.”

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

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I was first drawn into Emily St. John Mandel’s world back in 2015, when Station Eleven caught my eye after popping up in a few “best of” lists.  It became an immediate favorite, and I know that love is shared here within our CBR community! I’ve read it twice since first picking it up, most recently in March, right as the world started to dip further and further into pandemic horror. I wrote in a previous review that I would not have picked up The Glass Hotel […]



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