Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A new spin on an old idea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

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Moreno Garcia does an amazing job setting the right mood in this newer gothic tale. Set in Mexico in the 1950’s, you forget that the world is more modern than what Noemi Taboada experiences. Having grown up in Mexico City to an affluent family, Noemi’s life is more about finding a worthy suitor and getting married than education or developing skills to join the workforce. Despite this, Noemi is a confident, charming, smart woman who would like to study at the University. While she enjoys […]

A Woman’s Work etc.

A Woman’s Place: The Inventors, Rumrunners, Lawbreakers, Scientists & Single Moms who Changed the World with Food by Deepi Ahluwalia, Stef Ferrari, Jessica Olah

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Bingo 8: Work A Woman’s Place: The Inventors, Rumrunners, Lawbreakers, Scientists & Single Moms who Changed the World with Food is basically a short illustrated encyclopedia of women who influenced the food world. The overall thesis is that their intellectual, physical, and cultural work across centuries and places has gone under-acknowledged. These women in different ways had to work to take care of themselves, their families, and communities, and in the process came up with things ranging from Camembert cheese to dishwashers to famous cookbooks […]

She was “Sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

The Story of Fannie Lou Hamer: An Inspiring Biography for Young Readers (The Story of Biographies) by Margeaux Weston

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She was born Fannie Lou Townsend. She became Fannie Lou Hamer after marrying. She would be born to a large family (20 children) run by sharecropper parents. She did as much schooling as she could, leaving school at a young age, but continuing to read and learn whenever she could.  As she grew she felt that having to work so hard for little results, the discrimination, having to struggle to take care of a family, and having no rights because she was a black woman […]

Doppelganger

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

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Are y’all watching Severance? Did you watch Dark Matter? Could I recommend Counterpart with J.K. Simmons and Olivia Williams? Have you seen Mr. Klein with Alain Delon? Surely you’ve seen Vertigo? How about Coherence? Look, what I am saying is that I love a doppelganger story. Published in 2023, Doppelganger is not exactly an under-the radar book. Naomi Klein, already a well-known author, has won several well-deserved awards for it. and I think it’s in a lot of people’s periphery, at least. In Doppelganger, Klein […]

Hook, Line and Thinker

All Fours by Miranda July

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If you’ve been traipsing around the ‘new book recommendations’ corners of the internet that I frequent, you’ve likely already read the (very effective) hook for July’s latest novel: “A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.” It certainly was effective on me, and I dived into this novel with reckless abandon. It’s […]

I ain’t no fortunate son

The Women by Kristin Hannah

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I have never actually read any Kristin Hannah before but this was the selection for the month for a book club I am in – I know The Nightingale was very popular at one point but I think I just hit the point of wondering how many more World War II novels we needed right around the time it came out? But I also get the the appeal – because World War II, at least from an American perspective, is one that is easy to […]



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