Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About Jenna

CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant

I'm an engineer who reads books to think about literally anything other than engineering. My favorite genre is “takes place in an old hotel.” (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Jenna's Quick Questions interview.)

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The Past Is Not Dead (neither am I)

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

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Not my first read of the year, but it is my first CBR14 review! I’ve got a couple dozen other reads that I’ll get around to reviewing soon. I received this ARC in a Goodreads Giveaway (my first! what a hell of a book for a first ARC!). It has not impacted the content of my review. Art Barbara (not his real name, but it sounds anti-cool, don’t you think?) meets Mercy Brown (also not her real name) in 1988 at the second meeting of […]

the december rush

The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman

The Haunting of Gillespie House by Darcy Coates

Your Fathers, Where Are They? And Your Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers

Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena

Near the Bone by Christina Henry

How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens

The Lightness by Emily Temple

The Very Nice Box by Eve Gleichman, Laura Blackett

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

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Franny, Jet, and Vincent Owens take special joy in disobeying their mother’s rules. They wear red shoes and black clothes. They read books about magic. They fall in love. It’s the Lower East Side in the 60s. Who can blame them? I didn’t realize this was a prequel. I just picked it up at an airport bookstore when I had 3 hours to kill and a low phone battery. I’m grateful this is the only book that called out to me. I’m always drawn to […]

with this post, you will know every book i read this year and how i felt about them

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Night Sister by Jennifer McMahon

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz

Life's Too Short by Abby Jimenez

Ten Dead Comedians by Fred Van Lente

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

N or M? by Agatha Christie

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

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You’ve probably heard of this one already. Woman takes the regional train to and from work every day and watches for a couple who live on a house backing the tracks. She likes to make up stories about what they’re doing every day. One day she sees the wife kissing a man who’s not her husband. Because her previous marriage ended due to infidelity, the main character goes to confront the wife, whom she does not know, but her alcoholism intervenes and she blacks out […]

Non-Fiction Catch-up (Connecting Link: Design)

Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett, Dave Evans

The New York Subway Map Debate by Gary Hustwit

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Bill Burnett and Dave Evans have taught the “Designing Your Life” course at Stanford for years now, guiding students in the art of figuring out what they’re going to do with your life. Their book provides a step by step guide, complete with printouts and activities, to help you do the same, even if you’re not paying Stanford tuition. My mom got me the workbook after I graduated and before I had found a job, when I was trying to figure out, well, what I […]

Heartbreakingly, aggravatingly, not for me.

Ararat by Christopher Golden

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I wanted to post this as its own review because reading and thinking about this book made me so mad that it spurred me to catch up on my reviews just so I could talk about this stupid awful book. I’m being mean because I was so hopeful at the beginning and so let down so quickly. Ararat by Christopher Golden is about an archeological/documentary/explorer crew who, while on a dig documenting what appears to be Noah’s Ark thousands of feet above sea level on […]

Playing Catchup

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Night Train by David Quantick

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten

Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Imposter Syndrome by Kathy Wang

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Listen, sometimes you graduate from college, panic about your future, land a job, and move to a new city and even though you’re reading a couple books a month you forget about the whole reviewing part. I’ve still got 6 more reviews to write from May-September reads, but here are a few from May and October. (I wrote half of the May ones in May so they might be a little outdated. A group of housewives in a suburb of Charleston, SC in the 90s […]



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