Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Poetic feels

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

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The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo is a coming of age story written in poetic verse. Xiomara Batista attends Catholic high school and forced by her mom to attend catechism classes. Her mom has a very strict idea of what her daughter should be. Boys are definitely off limits. Thus, she pours all her teenage angst into her prized notebook. Also lots of feelings about her classmate named Aman. It’s only when she joins the poetry club does she begin to find her voice. Unfortunately, she […]

Y’all…. This one’s gonna be a bit different

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  Lemme tell you a not-so-secret-secret about ‘adulthood’: Nobody knows what the f they are doing. So much of being an adult is dealing with sucky situations – all the sudden a lot of your friend’s parents are dying, or your sister-in-law gets cancer (again), or this one has an affair that devastates that one, or your cousin suffers another miscarriage while her sister is expecting twins.  Literally, life just becomes chock full of situations that you are not prepared to face, and suddenly you […]

I’ve been waiting for this moment for Cannonball my life, oh Lord

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CBR10Bingo: Backlog (Cannonball! and Bingo! Woohoo!) After reading a few Sherman Alexie books a few years ago, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony started popping up in my suggestions, and for some reason, I thought it was poetry rather than a novel. Once I read the description, I put it on my wishlist, where it languished for several months until I finally bought a copy last summer at The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles on a long lunch break from jury duty. I’ve pulled it off […]

The play’s the thing

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CBR10Bingo: This Old Thing (The Tempest) and Birthday (Hag-Seed) I’m a big fan of Margaret Atwood’s novels. I haven’t read everything she’s written, but I have a shelf full of her books and have loved all but one (sorry, The Heart Goes Last). I always watch for her new releases, and she’s one of the rare exceptions I’ll make to buy hardcover. When Hag-Seed came out a few years ago, I was all excited and ready to buy, until I looked at the cover blurb […]

“i am sleepwalking on an ocean of happiness i cannot baptize myself in.”

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I have said many times that reading Poetry is not my jam. I have mostly gotten over my entrance issues with science fiction and graphic novels/comics but Poetry still trips me up from time to time. The funny part? I’ve been known to write it, but reading a collection can be too much, and I think that’s the real problem – a collection of poetry, of really good poetry is likely going to feel like too much. At times, Sabrina Benaim’s first published collection, Depression & […]



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