Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About Lisa Bee

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Heading into my 8th year participating in Cannonball Read with CBR12: likely slowing down with my reading as work won't allow as much, but I'll try not to let that stop me!

Lisa Bee's Reviews:

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Slightly Less Bleak Than the Previous Historical Fiction Involving Performers that I Read This Year…

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

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So, funny thing about listening to this one in audiobook form, should you (like myself) choose to play books at 1.5 speed or more: the speaking will be a good and understandable pace, but every time a song gets sung by the reader, it comes out in a silly little lilt that sounded quite humorous to me every time, even if the mood of the novel or the song itself at that point was not supposed to be cheerful and funny. So fair warning about […]

A Personal Portrayal of a Childhood and Coming-of-Age that Stumbles in the Final Act

We the Animals by Justin Torres

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A friend actually recommended that I see the film We the Animals recently (which I haven’t gotten around to watching yet, whoops!), so upon finding out that it was an adaptation of a novel, I decided to get into the book. It is loosely based on the author’s own life, and reads like a childhood memoir of sorts. It is also very brief, and this works well in the majority of the novel to paint a picture of memories for the protagonist, but ultimately does […]

A Back-and-Forth Mystery with an Interesting Buildup that Didn’t Stick the Landing

The Night Before by Wendy Walker

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What we have here is a novel about how our relationships can shape us and the personal stories that we form about ourselves, often based on the perceptions and actions of others towards us. But more than anything else, it feels like a novel about a woman being gaslit in so many ways, to reinforce certain narratives about her character that she then can’t help but believe. The Night Before is told from two different perspectives. One is from the point of view of Laura, […]

A Decent Novel Unfortunately Weighed Down by my Comparing It to Other, Stronger Media About the Same Subjects

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

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If you are interested in the history and energy of the queer ball scene of the 1980s/1990s — such as was immortalized in the documentary Paris is Burning–, you may love this book. But then again, such as in the case of myself, you may simply think it is fine. I think this one really falls into a category of lesser-by-comparison. That is, I know these stories and have seen other media centered around this specific period of time and community, and found them all […]

Don’t Let the Whimsical Cover Fool You: The Hits Just Keep on Coming

The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O'Neill

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I don’t think I’m the only person who read the description of this novel expecting something different than it was: the publisher’s blurb in fact draws a comparison to The Night Circus, which I did not feel whatsoever, not even in the fact that they both include circus-style performers. Despite the false comparison, this is not to say that The Lonely Hearts Hotel is entirely a bad book because it didn’t meet my expectations, but it certainly wasn’t what I wanted at this time. This is […]



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