Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About dsbs42

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Nerd. Professional student. Eager reader. Reluctant writer. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: dsbs42's Quick Questions interview.)

dsbs42's Reviews:

‘What happened to the frogs? We don’t hear them calling anymore.’

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

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This book is equal parts heartbreaking, infuriating, fascinating, and beautiful. It hits my sweet spot exactly between natural history, science, environmentalism, and travel writing (freaking Kolbert got to go to, off the top of my head, Australia, Germany, France, Peru, Panama, Iceland, Scotland, and Italy for this book, and I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting some). This genre is my catnip, and if I could trade lives with any author on the planet, well, it would probably be Michael Palin, actually, but Elizabeth Kolbert and Mary […]

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

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More Angie Thomas goodness. I loved The Hate You Give and On the Come Up, and was excited to read the prequel from the point of view of Starr Carter’s father, Maverick. This was a quick read, no less impactful for what we already know about will happen to Mav, his girlfriend Lisa, and his two new babies. Because a lot of the backstory was only briefly touched on in THUG, there’s plenty to flesh out here, and I don’t think it’s only because of the […]

Riverdale meets Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meets Ted Lasso

You'll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus

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If you read my review of her last book, this one is going to be more of the same. (Once again – THREE CHARACTERS, KAREN. Why are you doing this to me?) Karen McManus is basically my YA Liane Moriarty, in that I will read whatever light mystery she writes and enjoy it no matter how slight, because she’s good at creating characters I like to spend time with. And also the first books of theirs I read were the best and it’s been somewhat […]

To all the stable geniuses out there, this one’s for you

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo

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I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds the reviews the hardest part of the Cannonball Reads. I read 44 books last year but only managed to review 17 of them. I’m aiming for the full 52 again this year, but this is, I think, the fifth time [ETA it is the sixth] I’ve tried and failed a full Cannonball? It’s harder to create than it is to consume. It’s also easier to tear down than it is to build. It’s easy to write […]

“F**k you this is hilarious.”

Texts from Jane Eyre by Daniel M. Lavery

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That ^ is Roxane Gay’s entire review of the Texts from Jane Eyre on Goodreads and it cracked me right up. The book is currently rated an average of 3.61 stars out of 5, so I assume that’s what she’s referring to. Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favourite Literary Characters (and also their authors, just so’s you know), is based on the feature of the same name (the first part of the name) from The Toast. The feature askes: if literary […]

Oh, ever in the greening spring…

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White

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What a charming little book. The Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little movies were big hits with me when I was a kid (in fact, that 1999 Stuart Little movie kickstarted a crush on Hugh Laurie that endures to this day), and so naturally obsessive little completionist dsbs42 needed to read the books those movies were based on. I loved Charlotte’s Web in particular. And at some point many years later, I decided to revisit them as an adult and bought the E. B. White set, whereupon […]



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