Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“We’re all alients to someone. Even among our own people, most of us still feel like complete foreigners from time to time.”

Saga (Volume 6) by Brian K Vaughan

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It’s been a while since I read Saga (June 2018 to be exact, thanks Goodreads!) so as I look for some quick reads to finish out my Cannonball (no shame in my strategy game!) I decided to get caught up on the series that really puts the GRAPHIC into graphic novels. I did a quick pass through Volume 5 as a refresher before moving ahead with volume 6 and volume 7. As I said, it’s been four years since I read this, and was briefly […]

down to the wire (as always) – BOOK CLUB TIME!

All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

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Why did I wait so long to read these two? This isn’t just a question of Book Club procrastination; this is a “what was I thinking?” moment! I had heard good things about both, I was enraged as ever when they (and others) showed up on lists of challenged and banned books, and they were both available on scribd! Also- why did I treat these books like homework? “oh man, I have to read these before I can move on to other things”- at the […]

Help! This school is trying to kill me

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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El (short for Galadriel) is a trying-to-be-good wizard whose powers seem much more designed to go very big and very bad: there’s even a prophecy about her. She’s a pupil at the Scholomance, in her junior year, desperately trying to stay alive through the unusual challenges being a wizard entails, and gain sufficient alliances with her fellow pupils that she’ll (a) be able to graduate (which means getting out alive from the Scholomance), and (b) get a place in a magical enclave, and not have […]

In which I finally rectify having never read an American master of writing

Beloved by Toni Morrison

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[TW: violence against children, racial slurs, depictions of slavery, abuse] BINGO – UnCannon In high school I took two AP English classes. In college, I took a Comparative Western Literature course. Toni Morrison was not on any of my reading lists for those courses despite the fact that Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and that Beloved was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. Perhaps, Morrison is not read more at […]

A sweeping epic of two families that I could not put down

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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BINGO – Home Summary: Homegoing follows multiple generations of families that start in 17th century Ghana and track all the way through modern day. Homegoing follows a linear plot structure but each chapter switches from family to family and from one generation to the next. This novel is sweeping in its scope. The culmination of the two stories lines comes together in an expected way but one that is still works. Most vignettes of the families are about finding one’s home or space, trying to […]

The perfection of imperfection

Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence by Joel Christian Gill

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Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence is not a perfect book. Which is what makes it interesting and exciting. This is (as the author, Joel Christian Gill, themselves says) a memoir not a biography. These snippets of Joel growing up in Virginia, living in the ‘partments, dealing with bullies (adult and kid) are based on events that happened, people he knew and a little poetic license to move his story along. They take you on a journey of how the author learned how and when […]



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