Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This memoir legitimately deserves 5 stars, but I’m too angry to give it a rating yet

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

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CBR 17 BINGO: “G” (for Glass) Back in 2019, I recommended Educated to my sister. After she read and enjoyed (not sure that’s the right word) it , she asked me whether I’d ever read The Glass Castle. “In some ways, it’s worse,” she told me. I finally got around to reading The Glass Castle, and I understand now where she was coming from. While Tara Westover’s parents were consistently ignorant and controlling, the parents of Jeanette Walls were people of dichotomy. Her father was […]

“She writes that she will walk across the ocean to be with her lover. He sees this, not as a declaration of love, but as a statement of a single-mindedness so total that a kind of grandeur creeps into it.”

In Pursuit of Love: A Journey in the Footsteps of Obsession by Mark Bostridge

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CBR17 Bingo: I – Re: the title. Victor Hugo was the most famous writer in the world when his daughter, Adèle, left their home in Guernsey on a years-long mad pursuit of a former lover. Centuries later, author Mark Bostridge retraces her steps and tries to understand her obsession in the prism of his own life. I have not seen acclaimed 1975 film The Story of Adele H., so this was my first real acquaintance with the strange life of Adèle Hugo, whose story was […]

Mom’s ups and downs

My Mom Is Like a Kite by Lisl H. Detlefsen

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While mental health issue stories are not new, even in children’s books, Lisl H. Detlefsen makes a fresh and creative work in My Mom Is Like a Kite. I assumed that the Mom in question would probably have highs and lows, but I did not expect them to be as serious as they are. I assumed this would be a lighthearted story about feelings, one that says even adults are happy, sad, scared, etc. You know, real emotions. This is partly because Nathalie Dion’s illustrations […]

While looks easy, there is a lot packed it and not all of it is nice, but worth the read

Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand and Tara Anand

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Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand and Tara Anand has several potential triggers. They include (but are not limited to): self-harm, alcohol consumption, sexual context, suicidal thoughts, bullying, mental health, suicide attempt, and cultural situations/responses. Despite the issues, or maybe because of them, this is actually a fantastic story about how mental health is “hidden” even when it is right in front of you. The idea of being the “perfect Indian girl”, the idea of the “favorite son,” the idea of family and honor, and more, […]

Corey’s faith

Visitations by Corey Egbert

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Visitations by Corey Egbert is more of a rating of 3.5 than a pure 4 as there were areas I would have liked to have seen “more” of the story (I like that we don’t have a lot of “before divorce” (just enough to let you know what has happened) but seeing more of the Visitations (what their mother calls the time Corey and his sister, Sarah, have with their father) would be interesting. Afterall, this is part of the title. And I would have […]

Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: a memoir

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford

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mood music: Shake It Out – florence and the machine A strikingly sharp, tragicomedy-style memoir about grappling with lifelong mental illness, Bamford delivers a powerful life story through her unique lens. I am unfamiliar with her standup, but did watch a few episodes of Lady Dynamite, so I was familiar with some parts of her comedic work. But this was something that I went into mostly blind, my expectations fairly neutral although several podcasts I listen to recommended the memoir as a must-read. I have […]



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