Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“We should teach our girls that snapping is ok, instead of waiting for someone else to break them.”

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

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I only learned that Laurie Halse Anderson wrote her modern classic and much challenged novel Speak in response to her own rape as a young teen. But where Melinda came to art to find her voice, Anderson came to writing. Anderson writes in verse that runs the gambit of emotion and holds no punches.  It is a memoir of her full life, opening with a reflection on her father, whose severe PTSD sets the tone for her complicated home (later reflected in her YA fiction The […]

Not Every Essay Resonated

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

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I feel like a bad person for not totally loving this book. It was just hard to get through and some of the stories didn’t really move me one way or the other. I ended up just feeling sad while reading and finally finishing this book off with some wine. I think also that looking at rape culture is a huge undertaking, and so the stories could have flowed a bit better between them to the next story. Also I wish that things were not […]

This is hard to get through, even if you’re normally okay while reading books about rape.

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I have never had such a hard time getting through a book that I liked. “Liked” actually feels like the wrong word here. How can I say I liked something that made me angry and frustrated almost 100% of the way through, and which filled me with dread every time I tried to convince myself to pick it back up again? Perhaps “appreciated”? Understand is necessary? See its importance? But not liked. I didn’t expect this reaction, even though rape is a tough subject to […]

“We Can Handle Monsters. We Can’t Handle Our Neighbors Doing These Things”

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I saw MrsLangdonAlger’s review of this novel and was basically sold on the description of this one as an angry The Lovely Bones.  It is but there are also distinct differences – the rapist/killer isn’t a creepy older neighbor but a peer of Ellie’s.  The Lovely Bones was sad and beautifully written but by making I Stop Somewhere involve a peer, it is also very much a condemnation of rape culture, a testimony to how early girls learn their lack of importance and how early […]

Only 6 out of every 1,000 sexual assault perpetrators will end up in prison.

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Rape culture is real. But that doesn’t make me want to face it any more than I already have to in my life. I have had this book on my to read list since it was published in 2015.However I didn’t read it then, instead I picked up Into Thin Air to get a taste of Krakauer’s style before jumping into the deep end so to speak.  I have comments across many Cannonball Read reviews of this book saying that I’m going to tackle it […]

Hermione Winters’ Tale

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I’m always thrilled to read books that my students recommend to me. Even when their tastes as readers diverge wildly from my own, understanding the stories that resonate with them gives me that opportunity to have a conversation about literature and tone and theme that might otherwise just be tuned out. I mean, come on, I love Shakespeare, but he can be a hard sell for a sixteen year old who wants to hear her voice represented. Enter Exit, Pursued by a Bear, which obviously had me […]



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