Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Gardening to Victory

Gardens for Victory by Jean Marie Putnam & Llyod C. Cosper

by Leave a Comment

In a box my grandmother hadn’t opened for probably fifty years, she found a swath of old family documents, and in it was this book, Gardens for Victory, a comprehensive  guide to teach Americans how to  supplement their ration cards during World War II with sustainable gardening. We have no idea how the little pamphlet never got thrown away; the spine was very bent and the pages dog-eared, meaning my great-grandparents probably followed its instructions during the war for their own gardens. The fact that it had […]

“Luxury is the total fulfillment of all five senses at once.”

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

by 6 Comments

CBR Bingo: White Whale When I was a kid, our house had a hallway that ran between the living room and my parents’ bedroom. It was wider than a normal hallway, and lined with bookshelves that were filled with both books and pictures. One of my chores as a child was to dust this room. The Shell Seekers, in all its 80s floral and embossed glory, was one of the books that was kept in this room, and one I always remember seeing it as […]

Kicking off 2020 with Girl Power!

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy

by 4 Comments

I thought I knew a little bit about code breaking and World War II because I was aware of Bletchley Park, Alan Turing, and Enigma. And I was correct, I did know a little about it. Surprisingly (and maybe sadly?), I was unfamiliar with the story of 10,000 American women who served as codebreakers for both the U.S. Army and Navy during World War II. Code Girls tells the remarkable story of the work, lives, and patriotism of these women. I have to confess that […]

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

by 2 Comments

This is it. The last review of my cannonball! And what a book I have chosen to go out on. A friend of mine, seeing on Goodreads that I was edging toward my reading goal for the year, reached out to me with some graphic novel suggestions that I could tackle quickly to get across the finish line. It was great to have her support, and her endorsement that graphic novels “do count” which, of course they do! One of her suggestions was the graphic […]

You can hate the heroine; don’t hate the novel

Atonement by Ian McEwan

by 3 Comments

CBR11bingo: History/Schmistory (historical fiction) BINGO: Two Heads Are Better Than One, Back to School, Own Voices, Classics, History/Schmistory While having lunch with a friend recently, we started talking about books and he mentioned that he doesn’t have any use for novels that are “about writing.” On reflection, I realized I am often quite taken with novels that could be classified as metafiction (The Magpie Murders, The Word is Murder/The Sentence is Death, and, going all the way back to CBR V, The Tragedy of Arthur). So […]

New character, old story

White Bird by R. J. Palacio

by Leave a Comment

There are two ways to look at this book: the cynical way and the not so cynical. First, cynical. You could just say this is a retelling of the Anne Frank story. However, (SPOILER) with two main plot differences: Sara (the Anne character) is hiding alone and not with her family/other families and she survives the ordeal. Finally, the not so cynical way allows you to see that White Bird by R. J. Palacio was inspired by all the stories of World War II and […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo