Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“It is cause for celebration whenever anyone is, to the best of their ability, making their own choices free from pressure—and also working to change the social and political structures that will let everyone else have that same sexual freedom, and freedom of other kinds, too.”

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society & the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

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Quick review (ha! possible for me?) for a book that’s been holding up my review queue. This was an excellent book about what it means to be asexual, and how we think about sexuality in general. The best thing about it isn’t the way it explains asexuality, or the ace identity (which is extremely varied! as is all sexuality and forms of identity) but the way that it takes that premise and then opens it further. Chen posits that by acknowledging asexuality and striving to […]

“Seriously, my friend’s daughter is constantly misgendered because she favours clothes with dinosaurs on. EVERYONE KNOWS ALL DINOSAURS WERE BOYS AND THAT’S WHY THEY’RE EXTINCT.”

The Gender Games by Juno Dawson

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Been sitting on this review for two months now, trying to land on a star rating, and how to articulate what I wanted to say. Ultimately, this is a good book that is part memoir and part feminist/social text about being transgender (with a focus on the UK), with some intersectional feminist ideas thrown in. It’s also written in a very colloquial, humorous style that is very much not the norm for these kinds of books. This is what threw me, because I couldn’t decide […]

I admit it: I didn’t get it. But then again, I got it like a hot stick between the eyes

Birthright by George Abraham

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I have maybe 20-25 pages to go in Birthright and cannot finish George Abraham’s poetry collection. This has only happened once before, but that was because I was having a little trouble with the concepts of that other book. That poet had tossed out a lot of current events (just when they were starting to become hot/coming back into our consciousness) and there was a lot to absorb. This time it is for both similar and different reasons. This contradiction is throughout the book for […]

“The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you.”

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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It happened again. I excitedly picked up a book at the store, rushed it home, then let it sit in a pile for a few months. When I finally opened it days ago I was shocked (and not shocked at all simultaneously, really) that it was an oddly appropriate collection for today’s frightening world. The first page of the book is a quote from poet Elisabeth Hewer, and it lays the roadwork for the furious march within: “god should have made girls lethal when he […]

Another five star review for this wonderful graphic memoir.

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

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Note: We reached back to CBR12 to feature this review of Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. This year there is a renewed push to restrict access to books that reference race, gender, and sexuality. Kobabe wrote and illustrated an op-ed in the Washington Post on the need for queer kids to have access to queer books. In addition, eir was a guest on the Washington Post podcast, Please Go On. I have a lot that I want to say about this memoir, but I can’t figure out how to […]

Probably a must-read for any humans who have sex (and some who don’t! and just like learning!)

Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski

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I actually first heard about this book from Alyssa Cole. When she visited the Tucson Festival of Books last year, I went to a panel she was on about consent being sexy, and she mentioned that she was reading it, and had learned a lot of things people assume about women’s sexuality was wrong. I put it on my TBR but just never got around to it, despite sexuality being one of my favorite things to read about. Luckily one of my IRL book club […]



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