Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About Leslie

CBR13 participant

I'm an English prof who loves reading--ready to read and review books for a good cause.

Leslie's Reviews:

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> Articles by: Leslie

More Than Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

February 3, 2021 by Leslie Leave a Comment

A fictional oral history-style story about a seventies rock group risks being gimmicky, on a number of levels. And indeed, aspects of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six conform to conventions and tropes rather than challenging them, from the self-centered lead singer battling his demons to the manic-pixie dream girl who never wears shoes and never shows up on time. That said, this novel defies expectations and ultimately makes some surprisingly profound observations about love, art, and gender. (And it does not, thank […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: 70s rock, oral history, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Leslie's CBR13 Review No:6 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: 70s rock, oral history, Taylor Jenkins Reid ·
· 0 Comments

An American Icon and Reckoning with the Past

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

February 3, 2021 by Leslie Leave a Comment

Like most publicly-schooled Americans, my education about Japanese internment during World War II consisted of probably a paragraph or two in a history textbook that presented it as an unfortunate outcome of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into the war. In my recollection, the textbook mentioned that eventually the United States government apologized, but there was no direct statement that internment was an unjust imprisonment of American citizens, nor was there a first-person account of what internment was like. It […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, Graphic Novel/Comic Tagged With: george takei

Leslie's CBR13 Review No:5 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, Graphic Novel/Comic · Tags: george takei ·
· 0 Comments

Creepy Christmas Carols

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

January 17, 2021 by Leslie Leave a Comment

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill (2013) is a horror novel that bears similarity to some of Stephen King’s work, which is probably why it ended up on my to-read list, along with The Passage by Justin Cronin (2010). The antagonist of NOS4A2, Charles Manx, is reminiscent of Pennywise the Clown of King’s IT: both vampirically stay young by kidnapping and feeding upon kids, and both warp happiness into horror, Pennywise with his clown suit and Manx with the trappings of Christmas. His lair, for lack of […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Horror Tagged With: joe hill

Leslie's CBR13 Review No:4 · Genres: Fiction, Horror · Tags: joe hill ·
· 0 Comments

The Only Way To Get Someone To Listen to a Woman

Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

January 17, 2021 by Leslie Leave a Comment

A few years ago I watched a movie with Miles Teller and Jonah Hill. The premise is that Teller — a massage therapist with a pregnant girlfriend — gets sucked into a lucrative but unethical business selling arms to the US government during the Iraq war. I didn’t finish the film, in part because the opening sequence irritated me to such an extent that it poisoned my view of the story. We meet Teller’s character after a business scheme fails and he is “reduced” to […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: taffy brodesser-akner

Leslie's CBR13 Review No:3 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: taffy brodesser-akner ·
· 0 Comments

Your House Will Pay…And Keep Paying

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

January 10, 2021 by Leslie Leave a Comment

In college I was assigned to read Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight Los Angeles (1992). To say it is a book that has stuck with me would be an understatement. Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay (2019) reads as a companion piece, or perhaps a sequel, toggling between the early 1990s and the late 2010s to examine what happens when a racially-charged crime goes unpunished. The protagonists are Shawn Matthews, a Black man whose sister‘s murder in the 90s by a Korean shop worker became a rallying cry for racial […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Steph Cha

Leslie's CBR13 Review No:2 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Steph Cha ·
· 0 Comments
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