Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“If you think you didn’t save me too, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

Where You're Planted by Melanie Sweeney

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This is a sneaky, emotional book about what community is and what it means to people.   I don’t remember exactly what made me put this on my to read list back in April, but one of the reviewers I follow reviewed it as an ARC in March and described its vibe as “echoes of Nora Roberts with a flair of Anita Kelly + Kate Clayborn that really made me smile and tugged at my heart”. Okay, La Nora has had diminishing returns over the […]

A new Lucy Parker romance with actors falling for each other

Misdirected by Lucy Parker

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CBR17 Bingo: Work (Actors on set – and in private) I read this book at the end of March, and as such, I’m going to rely on the official plot summary to help me out here: Hattie Murton never dreamed of TV stardom. A straight-from-a-fairytale encounter with a casting agent somehow landed her a part on what she’d thought would be a one-off pilot for Leicester Square, a bodice-ripping drama adapted from a bestselling romance novel. Buoyed by a surge in demand for romantic dramas, […]

Culture has many forms

The Runaway Pancake by Tiny Fisscher

Sleep Here, Wake There by Caio Zero

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cbr17bingo Culture (Runaway Pancake) and Work (Sleep Here, Wake There) When you are a reader of the children’s genre you find all types of books. One of my favorites are picture books as they are fun, unique and quick reads. Still, they can have deep messages and/or be quirky and fun.  The Runaway Pancake by Tiny Fisscher and illustrated by Sophie Pluim (currently available but read via an online reader copy) (CULTURE) is a fun and quirky one with a  fun take on the Gingerbread […]

Madeline’s Working-Class Older Brother

Hotel Splendide by Ludwig Bemelmans

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Ludwig Bemelmans recalls his time as a waiter at a fabulous hotel in New York City, complete with lots of humor, tragedy, and a cast of colorful coworkers. I picked up this book because I love behind-the-scenes stories, and because I was interested in learning about the fabulous excess of 1920s New York City from a working-class perspective. It was only after I started reading it that I realized that the Bemelmans also wrote the Madeline series, about the little girls who lived “In an […]

“If, for some unknown reason, you find yourself in a casino, always remember to tip your dealer.”

Last Night at the Casino: Volume 1 by Billy McCall

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I really like this zine so was thrilled to see that he had collected the first eight issues into one volume, along with some new material. I collect zines and especially love perzines and zines dealing with aspects of life I don’t have as much knowledge about, which casinos definitely fall under. Last Night at the Casino details Billy McCall’s experiences working as a casino dealer at a smaller casino in New Mexico, mainly working at the craps table. When the book begins, he’s just […]

Work reading thunderdome

Multipliers by Liz Wiseman

Radical Candour by Kim Scott

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Battle of the ‘read it for work’ books! First round: the credentials. Liz Wiseman was the Vice President of Human Resources Development at the tech giant Oracle, where she created Oracle University- seems like good background and skills for teaching the rest of us some things about leadership. Kim Scott worked at Apple and Google, including as part of the ‘Apple faculty’, and also coached CEOs at Twitter, Dropbox and some other tech companies. She also name drops Sheryl Sandberg. So far seems like an […]



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