Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

National Poetry Month- what doesn’t kill you still hurts

Our Lady of the Ruins by Traci Brimhall

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When it comes to reading poetry, I tend to stick with the classic epic poems like Beowulf and The Odyssey or more contemporary YA poetry-as-novel (The Poet X, Brown Girl Dreaming). I can’t remember a time outside of a classroom when I read a poetry collection. So for the CBR book exchange last December, one of my suggestions for whomever was buying for me was a book of poems, and Cannonballer Bonnie sent me this slim but stunning and provocative collection by contemporary award-winning poet […]

Life is Hard: A Sermon (with a soupçon of Fix-My-Husband)

I'm Fine and Neither Are You by Camille Pagán

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When I became too old for Sunday School, I had to learn to sit through sermons. At first I doodled hearts and flowers on the church bulletin. When I was too old for that, I turned my attention to analyzing the sermon. Depending on the preacher, I waited for Freudian slips, clichés, logical fallacies (“no true Scotsman”), and flights of magical thinking—flaws I found quite amusing. Yet the quickest way to lose my interest and respect was to traffic in the soggy old object lesson.  […]

“See her name: Lady Sorrowfree, happiness winning over bitterness, no regrets in this world.”

The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan

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In the Chinese tale of the Kitchen God, a man named Zhang, who owes his wealth and success to the efforts of his wife Guo, grows tired of her and throws her aside for another woman. When he falls on hard times and becomes destitute, fate puts him back with Guo, but his shame leads to his death. In the afterlife, he is rewarded for his remorse by being made the Kitchen God, a sort of spy, susceptible to bribery, who bestows luck upon individuals. […]

Excellent indeed

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

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There is a Cannonballer out there, whose name I cannot remember, who is a big Barbara Pym fan. Perhaps it’s multiple Cannonballers? Not sure. Anyway, Pym’s name has come up many times over the Cannonballs, and a few weeks ago, I found Excellent Women for $2 at a bookstore’s going out of business sale. While that is sad news (especially as it’s the closest bookstore to my home), the $2 turns out to have been the best investment I’ve made in a long time. This […]

Imperfect love and ruthless writing

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

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This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. Unintentionally, I have read two novels in a row that have to do with imperfect mothering told from the perspectives of women who have been imperfectly parented and who in turn recognize their own shortcomings. In The Language of Flowers the narrator was quite young, an orphan, and dealing in real time with the daily ramifications of imperfect parenting. In My Name is Lucy Barton, the narrator is older, […]

No bed of roses

The Language of Flowers: A Novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

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I downloaded this novel last summer because the main character is a product of the foster care system in the US and I thought it would have some interesting things to say about that system and the difficulties it presents to children in it. In some ways the novel does do that, but mainly it is a reflection on parenthood and flawed parenting. How do you become a good adult/parent if you haven’t had one? The story is told from the point of view of […]



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