Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

by Leave a Comment

This won’t be a long review. I don’t have anything substantive to add to what’s already been written and said about Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, and I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to say anything at all. As a middle-aged, middle-class white guy from the very white Deep Midwest, I’m several degrees of separation from this book’s intended audience, but that’s exactly why it’s an important read for people like me. Starr lives in a rough neighborhood where everyone knows her because […]

Mirrors that don’t reflect reality

by 3 Comments

I received Boy, Snow, Bird from an earlier CBR book exchange, but it had been collecting dust for a few years. I finally had a reason to pick it back up when my Mocha Girls Read book club selected it for a fairytale’s retold theme. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel is a VERY loose version of Snow White set in the 1950s. Boy Novak runs away to a small town to escape her abusive father. She meets a man named Arturo who isn’t quite a prince, but he […]

Have you found your color?

by Leave a Comment

Honeysmoke brings up an interesting question: If you mother and father are two different colors, what is your color? Simone wants her own color. She is not black or white or peanut butter or any other color. Her friends and parents try to help her, but Simone is determined to give a name to what color she is. The how she comes up with her color is pretty special; just like she is. It shows that she is a little bit her mom, dad and […]

My favorite book of 2018

by 2 Comments

It’s official: I have the yips. I finished reading this book three weeks ago, but every time I’ve tried to write a review, I freeze, not because I have nothing to say but because I can’t seem to calm my mind enough to write the review this book deserves.  For you see: Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is my favorite book of the year. Chee shares essays about his life and writing career, keeping the subjects separate at first, then integrating them […]

It’s a thin line

by Leave a Comment

CBR10BINGO: Under Represented This past weekend, I went to a family wedding where my first cousin’s daughter was one of the brides. I have a complicated relationship with most of my family, but the one person with whom I’ve always felt closest is this cousin. I was able to go a day early and got to spend some extra time with just her and her husband. The subject of birthdays came up, with mine just a few days away, and I told her that I’ve […]

One little Mix up….or was it?

by Leave a Comment

In the beginning the three colors Reds, Yellows and Blues lived in Harmony. That is, until one day a Red says, “Reds are better!”  Of course, Blues and Yellows will not stand for that and the three colors each make their own section of the city. That is until the day that two of the colors find themselves feeling good when they are with the other one. Of course, many did not like the colors mixing, but soon Yellow and Blue make a new color […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo