Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“you can play as a dog, a boot, or a trebuchet”

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

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Man, I really wish Monopoly (oh wait- World Domination) had a trebuchet. I’m usually the shoe, but I would LOVE to be a trebuchet. It has been perpetually gray here in New Hampshire for the last…oh jeez, three weeks? I needed something familiar to hunker down with while waiting for the sun to return, and while shuffling around my house I remembered LittlePlat‘s recent Nimona review. A great review about a great book? Just the spark I needed! Thank you, LittlePlat, and thank you to […]

Being a teenager is hard enough without the threat of total annihilation looming on the horizon.

I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi

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Jesse, Cate, and Adeem are all just trying to survive- even before they catch wind of an alien planet’s message to earth: you will all be destroyed in seven days. Our main trio holds a treasure trove of teen torments between them: absent parents, the desire to be loved, the inability to accept care, the need to be anywhere other than where they are. Everyone is attempting to find someone who does not necessarily want to be found, and I was worried that we’d being […]

Oh! To be sixteen once again

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  As a 16 yo, I didn’t experience a first love. A couple of crushes, but none of them were anything more than an occasional glance in the lift, or a quickening of pulse when they appeared in front of me. To read Rainbow Rowell describe it so minutely in normal-speak without being elaborate is a welcome peek into a world when feelings run amok, you barely understand what’s happening and yet you feel so much (so – much like my current mid-thirties, GOTCHA, dumb-ass […]

Joy in a comicbook form – great to read, great to gift, two enthusiastic thumbs up.

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The Lumberjanes fill me with so much joy it is hard to encapsulate on the page. I want to sing about it from the rooftops, and I just might do so, to get more people reading these powerful comics. I first heard of this delightful series from the Literary Disco podcast, my go to source for reading material. I don’t read a ton of comics/graphic novels, so I sort of put it out of my mind, and I am kicking myself squarely in the butt […]

Break down the self, offer yourself up like dust to the universe.

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In the Cannonball Read Facebook group, someone awesome posted an article called “The best books of 2016 list you get when you combine 36 “Best Books of 2016” lists.” The Girls is 6th on that list, appearing in 10 of the 36 “Best Books of 2016” lists combined for the “ultimate list.” It’s okay. Here’s what it has going for it: it’s completely real. Here’s what it has against it: it’s not new. The Girls is the story of an older woman reminiscing about that […]

Banned Book Week Selection

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Over the past few years I have begun to pay attention to reading books by or about members of the LGBTQ community. In general, I’ve tried to be more aware of my reading habits and expand them generally. It was a boon to me then that one of the tasks for Read Harder challenge was read a book by or about a person who identifies as transgender. I shortlisted three, but decided to go with Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin as […]



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