Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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allisonata

Avid reader in California who has lurked on Pajiba since Lindsay Lohan was part of the advertising. Interests range from white male literature to YA to history to graphic novels. Trying to decolonize my bookshelf and make sure women get at least equal time.

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allisonata's Reviews:

Life is Hard: A Sermon (with a soupçon of Fix-My-Husband)

I'm Fine and Neither Are You by Camille Pagán

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When I became too old for Sunday School, I had to learn to sit through sermons. At first I doodled hearts and flowers on the church bulletin. When I was too old for that, I turned my attention to analyzing the sermon. Depending on the preacher, I waited for Freudian slips, clichés, logical fallacies (“no true Scotsman”), and flights of magical thinking—flaws I found quite amusing. Yet the quickest way to lose my interest and respect was to traffic in the soggy old object lesson.  For the uninitiated, a pastor will tell a story—maybe from the news, maybe an anecdote, […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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4/14/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:24 |

Five Books on Screenwriting

Screenplay by Syd Field

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

Tough Love Screenwriting by John Jarrell

Writing Screenplays that Sell by Michael Hauge

The Wall Will Tell You by Hampton Fancher

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If current trends hold, the future’s great American novels will be movies or TV series. Film fully exploits sight and sound as well as action and dialogue, and—unlike video games—it requires little time or effort to participate in a complete story. Hollywood would be helpless without the imagination and craft of the not-so-famous people who spin narratives and sparkling dialogue out of thin air. Many screenwriters are self-taught, some graduate from fancy film schools (*cough* USC *cough*), and some are also novelists (see: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ian McEwan). The vast majority never get a film career going, and those who […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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4/10/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:23 |

What’s Not to Love?

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

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My romantic expectations hover somewhere between The English Patient and Lust, Caution. (Love is brief and destroys lives. THE END.) Reading The Rosie Project, I found myself loving the dispassionate narrator in spite of myself. Don is bright, witty, and somewhere on the spectrum. Though he has no use for love—he’s busy with his successful career and finds satisfaction in his careful routine—he decides a wife could be a helpful addition to his overall situation. Imagine Mr. Spock going on OKCupid. The author has said that this story started off as a screenplay. It shows, in a good way. Despite […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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4/6/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:18 |

The Original YA Novel: Classic for a Reason

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

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Everyone has a classic book that they’ve successfully managed to avoid. Jane Eyre is mine. After abusive Wuthering Heights left me fuming—f***ing emo Heathcliff—I binned all the Brontë sisters. I know now that I did wrong. Strong and sensitive Jane Eyre is the progenitoress of Anne of Green Gables, Meg Murray, Lyra Belacqua, and Katniss Everdeen. Unlike any English novel prior to 1847, the story happens *inside* a young woman’s mind, giving the reader direct access to her thoughts, emotions, and observations. (The book couldn’t exist otherwise: her actions are usually unremarkable and the world finds her inscrutable.) Brontë alchemizes […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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3/9/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:17 |

Murder Mysteries: Hercule Poirot > Miss Marple

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Nemesis by Agatha Christie

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The ingenious website I Write Like has informed me on six separate occasions that my writing most resembles that of Agatha Christie, the best-selling author of all time, aside from Shakespeare and the Bible. Praise be! However, I have never read the First Lady of Mystery, as murders solved by someone other than Sherlock Holmes rarely appeal to me. Fortunately, on last week’s trip to the coast I came across Coalesce Bookstore, a shop packed to the rafters with volumes old and new. I left with a well-thumbed 1972 Pocket Books edition of Nemesis (1971) and a new 2017 mass-market paperback of Murder […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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3/2/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:16 |

These Virtues are Formed in Man by His Doing the Actions

Severance by Ling Ma

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“I couldn’t see myself as a product coordinator forever, coordinating Bibles, shaving razors, Nike sneakers, or whatever, from my desk in New York to various plants across Southeast Asia. Just because you’re adequately good at something doesn’t mean that’s what you should do.” On the surface of it—introverted young woman absorbed by her career struggles to survive a plague-ridden world—this book’s premise isn’t particularly innovative. Turns out it’s all in the execution. This finely crafted novel fully deserves the flotilla of awards it gathered in 2018. The story mashes up several of my favorite things: zombie-esque apocalypse; career malaise; parental […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/25/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:14 |

Undiagnosed Mental Illness Will Wreck Your Life

Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See by Juliann Garey

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“…You are very lucky. Not everyone can feel things as deeply as you. Most people, their feelings are…bland, tasteless. They’ll never understand what it’s like to read a poem and feel almost like they’re flying, or to see a bleeding fish and feel grief that shatters their heart. It’s not a weakness, Grey. It’s what I love about you most.” Our man Greyson, a successful Hollywood executive with a wife and an eight-year-old daughter, has an undiagnosed mental illness. It’s an unescapable, nameless issue that dictates more and more of his life. Sometimes it’s a boon to his career, boosting […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/25/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:13 |

Meg Ryan Rom-Com: I should have bought the Kindle edition (now $1.99!)

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

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Picking out a book is like dating before computers: all you’ve got to go on is cover and genre. Let’s say bleak non-fiction is your wheelhouse. Today you’re not feeling it—hundreds of pages about the Holocaust is enough for one week—so you think, hey! time for something new. Look at this handwritten recommendation on the bookstore shelf. Look at that cute paperclip…aww, it’s a workplace romance. Not my type, but maybe I’ve changed! Maybe there’s still feeling left in my pessimistic soul! I breezed through this book in 24 hours, waiting for stirrings or longing in my lions (not a […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Meg Ryan Rom-Com: I should have bought the Kindle edition (now $1.99!)"

2/10/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:12 |


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