Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Fiat.Luxury

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Fiat.Luxury's Reviews:

It’s 90 degrees here. This made it feel like winter.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

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I read TheShitWizard’s review and immediately bought this book, read it, and loved it.  I am all about some adult-level fairy tales.  This is right up my alley. Vasya is a wild child, the fifth in her family, in Northern Russia.  She inherited her mother’s and grandmother’s second sight – the ability to see and interact with the invisible guardians, or chyerti.  A battle is brewing, though, between the Bear and the Frost-Demon.  Konstantin, a compelling and pious priest arrives in the village and introduces fear, a fear that feeds the battle and starves the chyerti.  Vasya’s courage might be […]

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12/19/2018 's CBR10 Review No:7 |

Why are we born, if not to help each other?

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

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Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much. This is the story of the Reverend Stephen Kumalo, who lives […]

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12/16/2018 's CBR10 Review No:6 |

A Shattering and a Shame

Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen

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“We cannot go abroad as Americans in the 21st century and not realize that the main thing that has been terrorizing us … is our own ignorance — our blindness and subsequent discovery of all the people on whom the empire-that-was-not-an-empire had been constructed without our attention or concern.” This book is well-planned and well-paced although it covers both the histories of America’s interventions in other countries ranging back 80+ years, and the author’s personal journey of awareness.  It is deeply heartfelt without being egocentric.  It is both angry and thoughtful.  I have never read another book like it. It’s […]

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12/13/2018 's CBR10 Review No:5 |

Crazy, Rich, Crazy Rich

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

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The Fug Girls made me read this.  The photos of the premiers of Crazy Rich Asians were all just so glam.  I obviously had to see the movie.  I mean:   But I can’t see the movie if I haven’t read the book.  So I obviously had to read the book. By now you probably know the main plot: woman (Rachel) goes to Singapore to meet boyfriend’s (Nick) family.  Turns out he’s rich like whoa.  She is blindsided by the money, the lifestyle, and the toxic reactions by everyone – mom (Eleanor), aunties, eligible bachelorettes – to their relationship.  She […]

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12/9/2018 's CBR10 Review No:4 |

“There is the same unforgettable alchemy to being dislikeable as to being universally loved.”

Ponti by Sharlene Teo

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I found myself in a really spectacular bookstore last spring, and all I wanted to do was buy ALL THE BOOKS, and then maybe take all the books to a nearby cafe and read them and drink coffee and watch people until it was too dark to read, and then do that every day.  I could not, sadly, do all of those things, so I consoled myself by buying only two books, and then reading them in the waiting room in the hospital, which was the whole reason I was in London in the first place.  (I’m fine!) We were […]

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12/2/2018 's CBR10 Review No:3 |

Staging a space mutiny, one day at a time.

The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts

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For some reason, my 2018 books have not been page-turners, and I am not sure why.  I’ve picked up a lot of books that are enjoyable but not dying-to-see-what-happens good.  This was one of the few exceptions, recommended to me by my avid sci-fi reader husband. The best way to go about this book is to just dive in with no expectations.  It is…a bit confusing.  There are whole sentences that I couldn’t really parse, but got the gist of, enough to keep reading and get, more or less, what was going on.  Even the mission of the ship Eriophora […]

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12/2/2018 's CBR10 Review No:2 |

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

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This was the first book I read this year way back in January, and I had just had my daughter (she turns one this week!) and it really just gave me a lot of feelings, and I didn’t know how to write them all in a book review, so I put it off to “let it settle” and whoooooops now it’s December!  Hi guys! This is a feelings book. It is grim, but it is also optimistic and lovely and hopeful. Kalanthi was 36 and just finishing residency as a neurosurgeon when he was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He was […]

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11/30/2018 's CBR10 Review No:1 |

This book is a delight.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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I picked this up because it was on everyone’s to-read lists.  I thought it was probably about Cold War spies, maybe something along the lines of John le Carré. This is not a book about Cold War spies. This is the story of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who has been sentenced to house arrest in the Hotel Metropole, where he is in fact already a resident, for writing a poem. (It could have been worse–it could have been a bullet to the head.) Rostov is a man of manners and charm–old school, if you will–and determines that if the world […]

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8/22/2017 's CBR9 Review No:9 |


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