Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Make Samosa, Do Good in the World

The Kitchen without Borders: Recipes and Stories from Refugee and Immigrant Chefs by The Eat Off Beat Chefs, Siobhan Wallace, Penny De Los Santos

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I love food. I love flavor. While there are individual ingredients and dishes I don’t care for, I have yet to meet a cuisine I disliked. I love people and learning their stories. I especially love when people are sharing something about which they are passionate. The Kitchen Without Borders ticks a lot of my boxes. I received an arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Eat Offbeat is a catering company in New York City started by and employing immigrants and refugees. […]

Trying to find a past that is not yours

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui

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The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui is an emotional story. It is hard to digest all that is presented. On the surface is a story of being an immigrant, but also a child who remembers little of the journey that made her and her family immigrants.  It is a graphic novel that is about becoming an adult who finally learns about her past, the past of her family (as individuals (her parents) and as a family unit). And finally, she learns […]

One of the Untold stories of World War Two

Under the Broken Sky by Markio Nagai

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I was taught that if writers have a negative comment about what they are reviewing, they should start with a positive comment. However, I am going to be a rebel and start with the negative: If I have one complaint about Under the Broken Sky by Markio Nagai it is that the language is too modern. The contemporary voice of the narrator occasionally took me out of the (historical) moment, making me backtrack to get back to Manchuria mid-1940s. Now that is over, the good […]

One of those books where everyone reading finds something else

What Is a Refugee? by Elise Gravel

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What is a refugee?  We get a simple, but informative, answer to that question in Elise Gravel’s picture book, What Is a Refugee?  You find out why people leave their homes, the feelings they have and what could happen to them while trying to find a new home. While not too in-depth, there is much covered. Therefore, this might not be for the very young reader/listener. Yet, due to its format, it is aimed at younger children. Therefore, know your reader and their ability to […]

Did We Really Need that Character?

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

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I picked this up on a whim at a used book shop. The cover was nice and the first page was really intriguing. I got into it right away, and the story starts out with an incredibly compelling narrator, Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee escaping to England for asylum after a terrible event occurs in her village. As the story unfolds, however, the plot goes crazy-pants and we’re introduced to a second narrator, Sarah, a British magazine editor who met Little Bee through terrible circumstances […]

“Richard knows he’s one of very few people in this world who are in a position to take their pick of realities.”

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Susan Bernofsky)

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Time does something to a person, because a human being isn’t a machine that can be switched on and off. The time during which a person doesn’t know how his life can become a life fills a person condemned to idleness from his head down to his toes. Go, Went, Gone is a carefully crafted, meticulously researched novel that feels as natural as walking down the street. Protagonist Richard is a newly retired professor of Classics and a childless widower. As a former East Berliner […]



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