Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search this Site

About Pooja

CBR14 Participant
CBR14 Bingo Badges
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant
CBR18 Levels

Ardent reader of pretty much anything, including the backs of shampoo bottles. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Pooja's Quick Questions interview.)

Pooja's Reviews:

“But not everyone has dreams. Some people just are, the way that trees and rocks and rivers are just there without a reason, the rest of the world moving around them.”

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

by 4 Comments

CBR17 Bingo: Citizen – Though Cora is a citizen of the United States, her race – as well as the race of the many murdered Asian women in this book – makes everyone around them perceive them as foreigners to the point that they are stripped of the safety that their citizenships were supposed to have given them. Cora works as a crime scene cleaner during the COVID-19 pandemic – after witnessing her sister pushed in front of a train, the gore doesn’t bother her anymore. […]

One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

A Noble Madness: The Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now by James Delbourgo

by Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: N – Re: the title. The obsessive collector in history has worn many faces – a magician, a scientist, a connoisseur, a madman – but whether they are a force for good or evil in their societies is a more complicated question. When I think of collectors I usually think of the modern kind who collects some specific category of kitsch because they like them, be it stuffed animals or porcelain figurines or Stephen King novels. As someone who dislikes clutter and has […]

“She writes that she will walk across the ocean to be with her lover. He sees this, not as a declaration of love, but as a statement of a single-mindedness so total that a kind of grandeur creeps into it.”

In Pursuit of Love: A Journey in the Footsteps of Obsession by Mark Bostridge

by Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: I – Re: the title. Victor Hugo was the most famous writer in the world when his daughter, Adèle, left their home in Guernsey on a years-long mad pursuit of a former lover. Centuries later, author Mark Bostridge retraces her steps and tries to understand her obsession in the prism of his own life. I have not seen acclaimed 1975 film The Story of Adele H., so this was my first real acquaintance with the strange life of Adèle Hugo, whose story was […]

Wherever You Go, There You Are

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett

Kiss Her Goodbye by Lisa Gardner

by Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: Migrant – Both books involve characters who move to places they expect no one knows them and try, with varying success, to rebuild themselves into new shapes. The Killer Question by Janice Hallett – 5 stars Sue and Mal run a perfectly average British pub with an above average weekly quiz night, but the arrival of a mysterious new team that dominates the competition and the discovery of a body in the nearby river sends their lives into a tailspin. This is my […]

The Past Is a Different Country

The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan by Ivan Morris

American Monsters by Adam Jortner

by 2 Comments

CBR17 Bingo: Favorite – Both books are history books about fairly specialized, off beat topics – my favorite kind. The World of the Shining Prince by Ivan Morris – 5 stars For about a century about a millennium ago, a strange era flourished in Japan where a series of boy emperors were ruled by their in-laws (who were also their grandparents, cousins, and aunts), beauty was virtue, and the failure to catch the vaguest conversational allusion to a poem spelled social ruin. This book is […]

“This is how it works, with people who wield abuse like a knife and convince us they’re cutting us with love.”

The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix

by Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: O – The title starts with O. When Ranka is sent south to fulfill a treaty between humans and witches by wedding the crown prince, she goes only so that she can try to bring the system down from the inside. But as she gets to know Galen and his twin sister, the brilliant and beautiful Princess Aramis, she begins to realize that the truth about the conflict between their people may be different than what she’s always believed. What I really enjoyed […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo