Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Two Takes on Religion and Politics

Life On the Fringes by Haviva Ner-David

Take This Bread by Sara Miles

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                                                        CBR15Bingo: Politics (feminism, inter-community politics, personal politics) Both of these texts engage with what religion means to the writer and how they engage with their religious communities with a more radical and transformative mindset. Reading them in close succession was an interesting look into how feminist, progressive religious women struggle to find their place within structured organizations. However, they are coming from two very different faith traditions and two very different personalities as well. As someone who reacts strongly with the personality of the […]

An aptly named memoir

Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton & Me by Bernie Taupin

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Cbr15bingo on the air I like Elton John’s music. I know people who are super fans, and I am not one of those, but growing up in the 1970s with older siblings, I heard his music all the time on the radio or on our stereo at home. Between my sibs and me, we probably had most of his albums from the 1970s, and then with the ’80s and MTV, you couldn’t miss his videos. Recently, I heard part of Marc Maron’s interview with Bernie […]

Flight is but momentary escape from the eternal custody of earth.

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

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CBR15 BINGO (Take to the Skies square: memoir written by the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to North America) BINGO! (Take to the Skies to Adulthood) For last year’s CBR Bingo, I read Circling the Sun by Paula McClain and loved it. I fell hard for the problematic but endlessly fascinating shenanigans of mostly swanky Europeans living, farming and cocktailing their way across East Africa. McClain’s novel centered on Beryl Markham who was the most interesting of the bunch. Raised on her father’s farm, she grew up with […]

For a long time I had tried to belong in America, wanted and wished for it more than anything, but in that moment all I wanted was to be accepted as a Korean by two people who refused to claim me.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

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“Mom’s afraid you two will fight if you come,” my father admitted later. “She knows she has to put all her focus into getting better.” I assumed the seven years I’d lived away from home had healed the wounds between us, that the strain built up in my teenage years had been forgotten. Now we were closer than ever, but my father’s admission revealed there were memories of which my mother could not let go.” ― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart “Sweet braised black […]

Ah, to be young and have much money…

And I'd Do it Again by Aimee Crocker

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CBR 15 Bingo – Asia/Oceania: Aimee was fascinated by the people and cultures of Asia from when she was young, and the majority of the adventures she recounts take place in various countries there. Edwardian heiress Aimee Crocker, after the failure of her first marriage, sets off multiple years-long journeys around the world for the sheer joy of it, picking up along the way many lovers, children, pearls and snakes. I had never heard of Aimee Crocker until I read 19th Century Female Explorers and had […]

This book got canceled because of its author’s online behavior, but I think we should be reading it anyway.

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough

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I just need to write this review. It just needs to happen. I read the book back in APRIL and it is now August. I’ve been letting the whole THING around this book and it getting canceled and review-bombed get to me. This was a book club pick for one of my in-person book clubs, and my friend Alison who picked it definitely picked it in part because it was a controversial book and she likes drama. If you’re not aware of the drama surrounding […]



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