Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Blingle Bells

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Bio mom to a wild-haired five-year-old spitfire, foster mom to a three-year-old hooligan. Wife to a nurse. I spend my days tripping over dogs and putting out fires.

Blingle Bells's Reviews:

“I am more haunted by her actions than she is.”

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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I’ve been dreading reviewing this, honestly. I feel like everyone loved this book. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. For me, it was like politely – experiencing? Not quite enjoying, not quite enduring – the company of someone you aren’t quite at ease around, don’t quite get, don’t quite like, but respect enough to not want to be rude. The plot isn’t really hiding many potential spoilers. Ayoola and Korede are sisters. They live in Nigeria. There father was abusive. Their mother is […]

Care. Tasks. Are. Morally. Neutral.

How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis

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Are you a parent? If no, are you at least a human? Do you struggle with any of the following: housework, meal prep/planning/obtaining/cooking, laundry, the constant mental energy suck of parenting, daily hygiene? Is any of that a result of depression, ADHD, disability, life-is-a-marathon exhaustion, lack of support, having more to do than there are hours in the day? Do you feel: guilt, shame, anxiety, depression, shitty self-worth, like a failure? If you answered yes to any of those questions or anything similar, BUY THIS […]

“…reality simply waits, patiently, for you to run out of the energy it takes to deny it.”

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Next up on my “Pajiba recommendations for sure shot books until I pay my library fines” list – in case anyone is wondering, my fines are paid and I’m now a fully operational library patron again and forevermore – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Basic premise – Evelyn is an aging, reclusive old Hollywood star giving the scoop of a lifetime to a reporter for a Vogue-surrogate magazine. Evelyn is brash, confident, and chilly. Monique, the reporter, is floating along letting her life happen […]

“A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.”

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

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Last year, I fell off the CBR wagon when COVID shut down all of our libraries and I was unaccustomed to actually buying books. Then I may have forgotten to return the books I already had out and accrued a fine. So I started 2021 determined to complete a 52 book Cannonball but obliged to pay for books until I settled my library account. Without the luxury of picking ten books and being free to abandon anything that didn’t work out in the first chapter, […]

The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

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As always, I’m three years late to the party with this one. Mostly, I loved it. I’m on book #7 for the year, but this is the first I’m reviewing after dropping out early last year when becoming a foster parent ate my life, and I’m still getting in the swing of how to structure reviews so for this one I’m going to just do liked and disliked lists. Liked: I’m a sucker for a book with a large cast of characters who all feel […]

Will this be a review of this book or a review of my Episcopalian conversion? Stay tuned.

Jesus Was An Episcopalian (And You Can Be One Too!) by Rev. Chris Yaw

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There’s a lot to unpack here and most of it really isn’t about this book. I was raised Lutheran and turned out queer, which took me down Agnostic Avenue. I was also born and raised with an unfortunate penchant for self-loathing and perfectionism and never lost a deep-down belief in some kind of God. Enter a great big beautiful holy corrupt institutional enabler: the Catholic Church. And that’s how I became a queer adult convert to Catholicism. I felt something in the church I’d never […]



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