Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About Rooooomie

CBR13 participant

Trying to rid myself of the terrible habit of reading more about books than reading actual books.

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The stories we tell ourselves

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

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Conversations with Friends has earned the (dubious) honor of receiving my first 5-star review of the year. For the first 3-4 chapters in the book, I didn’t think it would, but it ended up being a compulsive read that kept popping up in my mind when I was doing other things. Conversations is a tight story about a young student, Frances, and her best friend (and ex-girlfriend) Bobbi, who meet and befriend Melissa, a journalist married to a handsome actor, Nick. As Frances is drawn into Melissa […]

When favorite authors disappoint you, pt 2: disappoint harder

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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In my second review for CBR13, I wrote about how disappointing it is when one of your favorite authors writes a book that you just do not like. I don’t know if this is some kind of cannonball curse, but with book 6 of this challenge, it has happened to me again. I used to be a huge YA fan, and the first book in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy still ranks as one of my favorites. His short novel A Monster Calls is amazing too […]

Readers bring a lot of baggage to their reading material

The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein

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I wish I had listened to the age-old adage: don’t read the comments. But that’s exactly what I did after I finished reading The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein; I opened the book in Goodreads to see what others had to say. Of course, a lot of people don’t like to read books that have unlikeable, or less than perfect, main characters. (I feel a bit weird using the word ‘character’ about a biography, but let’s go with it anyway.) I knew this already, but I […]

And then there were…

The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

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I’m not really into classic detective fiction. While I definitely enjoy a mystery and a puzzle (ooh, and a murder!) in whatever I read, I’ve not once had the urge to pick up a Sherlock Holmes novel, and only vaguely know about Agatha Christie’s famous stories. In fact, while The Decagon House Murders is loosely based on Christie’s And Then There Were None, I only knew about the latter’s infamously racist original title, nothing about the story itself. Decagon is, as I learned, a prime example […]

You’re not just lucky, you’re brilliant

Not Just Lucky by Jamila Rizvi

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If you’re a women – or know a woman – who is still early in her career and is struggling to advocate for herself, or has to deal with the rampant sexism and misogyny that is still — pause for a sigh — everywhere, then I wholeheartedly recommend Not Just Lucky. Written by Jamila Rizvi, a young woman with an awe-inspiring career, this book is part analysis, part memoir, and part self-help book. If that last part turns you off, I get it – but […]



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