Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Maybe all I need is a purpose.”

Singing With Elephants by Margarita Engle

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11-year-old Oriol wants to go back to Cuba. Ever since her grandmother died, she’s felt lost at her Santa Barbara, CA home. School is difficult, her older sister has less time for her since she got a boyfriend, and the only place she is truly happy is helping her parents at their veterinarian clinic. This clinic is no ordinary vet: her parents are specialty vets, assisting with wild and unique animals. In a show-biz state like California, they have a lot of work. One day, […]

“Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.”

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

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CBR14 Bingo: Verse (the whole book is written as poems) Xiomara and her brother Xavier (who Xiomara mostly refers to as Twin) are miracle babies, born late in life to their parents, who never believed they would have children. Growing up in Harlem, New York, they’re nevertheless part of the Dominican culture of their immigrant parents. Their mother is deeply religious and was possibly going to be a nun before she met their dad, whose wandering eye meant he got around plenty before marrying. While […]

Poetry Stuff

The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner

How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch

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CBR14Bingo – Verse The Hatred of Poetry This book is just fantastic. I’ve never not thoroughly enjoyed any of Ben Lerner’s books (and maybe one day I will read some of his poetry). He takes the topic of why people hate poetry and thinks through the wheres and whys of it — that it’s old, that it’s hard to read, that it’s oblique, and that it’s annoying. But he’s a poet and well, irony and all that. “Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond […]

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”

The Wasteland, Prufrock, and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

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I had an idea: I want to start reading at least one book each year published a hundred years ago. For the next several years it will be a time period that I study for work, but it was more than something I felt compelled to do for work. For as often as works are written for and of their time, there is also often works that can tell us a great deal about when they were written and still be for now. I’m hoping […]

Also suitable for reading on your comfy couch

Campfire Stories: Tales from America’s National Parks by Dave Kyu and Ilyssa Kyu

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Cbr14bingo Verse — because many of the selections in this tome are poems, and because our National Parks seem to be a ‘verse unto themselves.                       Full disclosure — I have never visited any of the parks featured in this book and I do not camp. I have zero interest in camping or even glamping. When I go on vacation, I want to stay someplace more comfortable than my own house, and I am not […]

“Mama always knew the wrong thing to say.”

Beauty Mark: a Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe by Carole Boston Weatherford

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In this slim volume, Weatherford imagines a memoir written by Monroe, chronicling her life from her tumultuous childhood in foster care to her troubled final days in her L.A. home.  It includes both personal, introspective pieces about Monroe’s internal struggles as well as pieces that catalog her film career and persona, and the public response to it. I devour any biographical media of Monroe’s as she is my number one icon. As a teen, I stole a poster of her from a neighboring school’s production […]



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