Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About Carriejay

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Many moons ago I took part in Cannonball Read II, under the name Teabelly. A lot has changed since then, and I now have five year old twin girls. I'm not getting as much reading done, but I'm hoping to make a half Cannonball at least.

Carriejay's Reviews:

Back off, Barbie

Parenting Beyond Pink & Blue: How to Raise Your Kids Free of Gender Stereotypes by Christia Spears Brown

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Gender stereotypes are everywhere. As a parent it’s something I’m really conscious of. I don’t want my daughters to think they can’t do something just because they’re girls. This book didn’t really fill me with confidence that this won’t happen, just because those stereotypes are so hard wired into our culture and society that they’re almost impossible to avoid. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in here, and Spears Brown investigates the so-called differences between genders and debunks a lot of myths about them, going […]

No One Told You Life Was Gonna Be This Way

I'll Be There For You: The One About Friends by Kelsey Miller

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I’m old enough that I watched Friends when it first aired, although I don’t remember watching the first episode. I was 13 or 14 at the time, and that was some Not Great, Bob time in our household, so a show that was that funny and that escapist was exactly what I needed. It saw me through my early adolescence, into university, until I caught up with where they started – my early twenties – just as their story was ending. But Friends didn’t go […]

The sky is falling

Out of the Blue by Sophie Cameron

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Angels are falling from the sky. Each one broken and bloody after their long plummet to the earth, their wings bent. There have been over eighty in less than a year and no one knows where they are coming from or why. And none has survived the fall. Jaya has been uprooted by her father and taken to Edinburgh in search of answers. Along with her little sister, Rani, she is forced to watch her dad’s obsession with the Beings take him over. Still dealing […]

“If the hair was found, other parts of themselves might be recoverable too.”

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

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Two young women, Yolanda and Verla, awake in dingy cells with no memory of how they got there. Slowly waking from their drugged sleep, they realise they are not alone. Ten girls in all, shepherded into the Outback, surrounded by an electrified fence, watched over by menacing guards. And no way out. Their hair shaved and heads covered by bonnets, they’re forced to do hard labour in the sweltering sun. Eventually they come to realise why they are there – each of them has been […]

Probably one for hard-core fans only.

Fire & Blood by George R. R. Martin

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Before Game of Thrones there was the age of the Targaryens, the only family of Dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria. And so they came to Westeros to rule. But before they could be kings and queens Aegon the Conqueror had to destroy those who stood against him. With his legendary sisters and their dragons against them the lords of Westeros bent their knees. This history recounts his reign and on through Maegor the Cruel to the civil war known as the Dance of […]

Such highs and lows in my reading this year

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

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After losing their mother, the five Dunbar boys are living a semi-feral life and they’re fine with that. They’ve got their menagerie of pets (mostly named after characters in Greek myth) and some weird routines and overwhelming memories of their mother, Penny. She who loved the ancient Greeks and her piano and told them stories of where she came from. Into all this walks the Murderer – otherwise known as their father, who walked out on them some time before. And it is Clay, the […]



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