Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Not all rainbows in these celebrity memoirs

We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union

Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) by Rosie Perez

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I read We’re Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union for my last in-person Mocha Girls Read meeting in March. This memoir is a collection of moments that are mostly linear with some flashbacks. Unlike Becoming, the chapters are not as detailed about her early childhood. The book is all about keeping it real and reflecting on her past with levity. We learn about her family and how she at a young age she looked after herself. With no supervision, Gabrielle got up to some […]

The Perks of No Longer Being a Teenager

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

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Oh, this book. I treated it like a sacred text back in high school. I gave it regular re-reads through the beginning of college, but then I let it fade into the background. It used to be my “Fall” book (despite it covering an entire school year) and while I continued to think back on fondly, I started to replace that nostalgia drip with the character-created playlists from within the book. It’s been years since I last picked it up, but Ride’s “Vapour Trail” creeps […]

cbr12bingo – No Money!

Bright and Dangerous Objects by Anneliese Mackintosh

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Full disclosure: I received this ARC from the Tin House Galley Club The atmosphere here in Bright and Dangerous Objects is heavy. It’s laden down with creeping grief, sudden disappointment and the growing dread of continuing to exist while things crash apart around you. Sensitive tattoo-artist boyfriends, fancy craft beer,  and getaways in stone cottages cannot save you from yourself. Solvig has inherited her mother’s furious brain. She has inherited her father’s tend towards self destruction. She has inherited a hunk of malachite that is supposed to […]

Finding Safe Harbor

Harbor by Rebekah Weatherspoon

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Yesterday a magazine posted an article about how we should read romances during this pandemic because they are dumb and will give our brains a break. I had just finished reading Rebekah Weatherspoon’s Harbor (Beards and Bondage) and wanted to cry in frustration. There is nothing dumb about this book, and even if it were pure porny fluff, if it accomplishes the goal of helping the reader cope – it is not dumb. There are so many amazing, smart writers in romance today. Rebekah Weatherspoon […]

terrific writing about terrible things

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

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Trigger Warning: please read the tags before deciding to read this review and/or book. If you feel that you can read this book, then you must. If you feel that you cannot, I will pass no judgement. Perhaps you have heard of the drama surrounding this release. American Dirt was climbing the charts and dominating the controversy  conversation when My Dark Vanessa tip-toed in and threw a hat into the ring. There was an implication of plagiarism from a woman who wrote a memoir about being groomed and […]

Home is something carried with us, in our blood, for better or worse

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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“What I know now, my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home. I’m sorry you have suffered. I’m sorry for the way your suffering casts a shadow over your life, over the woman you have yet to marry, the children you have yet to have.” I have friends who talk about memory like it is a living thing, ancestors like they have never died, […]



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