Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I'm a special education teacher by day and a reader by most other hours.

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“You’re stuck loving only hearts that can stop beating.”

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman

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CBR Passport – 4, new to me author; 3 – different genre – this was a mix between fiction and, given the amount that is drawn from the author’s real life, a sort of memoir I’ll start this review with a content warning – Catherine Newman’s popular novel, her only novel to date as she mostly writes non-fiction essays and children’s books, is about the death of her childhood friend. Edi, based on Newman’s real friend Ali, is dying of cancer. I know that many […]

“We were not liars, but but we made our own truths …”

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

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Agnes is in her late twenties, married to Earl and living in America in the 1960s, when she hears about the death of her childhood friend, Fabienne. It’s mentioned, almost in passing, in a letter from her mother, who still lives in Saint Remy in France, the farm village where Agnes grew up. Upon hearing this news, Agnes reflects on her childhood with Fabienne, which is the main focus of the novel (not to mention Agnes’ life). As young girls coming of age in the […]

“Sometimes, one person’s death is another person’s parole papers.”

I'm Glad My Mother Died by Jeannette McCurdy

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The title quote is actually from the book I’m reading next – The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li – but it felt really apt for a title for the review of this book so I went with it. I think, at this point, most of us know what this book is about – Jeanette McCurdy, former star of shows like iCarly and Sam and Cat on Nickelodeon, wrote a memoir about her life with her abusive mother. The tone of the book is sort of akin […]

“Some things, Vera knew, were made to die.”

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

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If you enjoy seasonal reading, I’d put this on the list for October – it has nice spooky bones and a strong creepy vibe (as you can pretty plainly tell from the cover art). Whenever you’re ready, the Crowder House will be waiting for you. Vera Crowder’s dad built the home that she grew up in – the home that she would leave at 16, and the home where she would return to witness the death of her mother.  The Crowder’s are a complicated family, […]

Both more finance AND mystery than I expected

Trust by Hernan Diaz

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When Trust was longlisted for the Booker prize, it was described as a “literary puzzle about money, power and intimacy” – and that’s quite apt for this novel. By the time I got around to reading it, I had all but forgotten any previous descriptions I had read about the novel, and thus the amount of talk about the 1929 (among others) market crash was a bit unexpected. Because this is a novel and not a textbook, the finance talk eventually gives way to a highly […]

“… the voices to whom the story belongs.”

Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, A Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier by Susan Jonusas

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This is a book about a family of murderers, but also about the entire context of life in the in middle 19th century. Maybe it’s because I’ve got dysfunctional politics on the brain right now (gee, I wonder why?) but a chapter I found most interesting felt very out of context in a book about  a serial killing family. Instead, this chapter detailed a political fight in Kansas 150 years ago – and would you believe that it involved allegations of sexual impropriety on the […]



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