Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About ElCicco

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Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

ElCicco's Reviews:

“Why am I only seen as someone who needs and not someone who can give?”

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

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Piecing Me Together is a 2017 YA novel, a Newbery Honor book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. Jade, a teenager from Portland, Oregon, tells her story of being poor, black and on scholarship to prestigious St. Francis school on other side of town. Jade is an excellent student and an artist who has much to offer and who is eager to break out of her neighborhood.  As she navigates two worlds — the neighborhood called the New Columbia and the world of […]

“Just because you’re the same kind doesn’t mean you’re all one happy family. The important thing is to understand each other. That’s love!”

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly: A Novel by Sun-Mi Hwang

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This short and utterly beautiful story is about following one’s dreams and maintaining hope in the face of despair. It is a meditation on family, motherhood, and selfless love. Published in South Korea in 2000, it became a bestseller and a classic of Korean literature. Hwang has written dozens of books and she has received multiple awards for them. The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is poignant and gorgeously written, with translation by Chi-Young Kim and illustrations by Japanese artist Nomoco. While this might […]

A timely reminder that Nazis are evil and fighting them is heroic

D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose

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D-Day Girls: The Spies who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II is a work of non-fiction about the women who worked in secret, behind the lines in France in the years of WWII leading up to D-Day. These women were recruited, vetted and trained in England to be dropped behind enemy lines. There, they helped co-ordinate the  resistance and lay the groundwork for the allied invasion. As their work was part of secret intelligence (the Special Operations Executive or SOE), […]

The Marriage Trap

The Widows of Malabar Hill: A Perveen Mistry Novel Book 1 by Sujata Massey

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According to the book jacket, this is “a mystery of 1920s India” and that was enough to make me very curious. “The Widows of Malabar Hill” is a murder mystery, and a fine one at that, but it is also a picture of Bombay (not sure why it’s Bombay and not Mumbai) shortly after WWI from the point of view of a young Parsi woman named Perveen Mistry. Through her, Sujata Massey immerses the reader in a world that straddles the traditional and the modern. […]

The real monsters aren’t the ones you think

Strange Practice: A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel by Vivian Shaw

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With summer approaching, you might be looking for something fun to take to the beach, and Vivian Shaw’s first novel in what is going to become a Greta Helsing series would be a fine choice. Set in contemporary London, this novel introduces us to Dr. Helsing, daughter of the famous Dr. Wilfert Helsing and doctor to the monster community. Mummies, ghouls, vampires (and vampyres— there’s a difference) all know they can count on Greta and her staff to ably and discreetly guide them back to […]

National Poetry Month- what doesn’t kill you still hurts

Our Lady of the Ruins by Traci Brimhall

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When it comes to reading poetry, I tend to stick with the classic epic poems like Beowulf and The Odyssey or more contemporary YA poetry-as-novel (The Poet X, Brown Girl Dreaming). I can’t remember a time outside of a classroom when I read a poetry collection. So for the CBR book exchange last December, one of my suggestions for whomever was buying for me was a book of poems, and Cannonballer Bonnie sent me this slim but stunning and provocative collection by contemporary award-winning poet […]



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