Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


About Sophia

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I love to read, and I love to learn. I wish I were retired so I could spend more time on my random flights of fancy. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Sophia's Quick Questions interview.)

Sophia's Reviews:

I have a new hobby

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

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I’m not sure if it was because I was getting older or my interests just shifted, but back in 2019 I suddenly became fascinated with birding. It felt like a whole new world opened up simply because I started paying attention. Now that I have a dog, I spend more time walking her than going out with my camera looking for birds. However, I still look out for them, and I still find birds (all animals, really) fascinating. I’m officially hooked. Recently I stumbled on […]

Not for me

Burn Book by Kara Swisher

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My book club chose Burn Book: A Tech Love Story (2024) by Kara Swisher as our latest book. We’d already read another tech memoir, Careless People, which I enjoyed. I was hoping I would like Burn Book as well. In the end, I didn’t love it. Although there were parts that were engaging, I did not have enough interest in or knowledge about the subject matter for me to appreciate it. Kara Swisher has been a tech reporter for three decades, covering tech from the very beginning back in the […]

Maybe I’m not capable of forgiving and forgetting

Here's Looking At You by Mhairi McFarlane

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After finishing Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane, I wanted more and started looking through McFarlane’s novels to see if I’d missed any. I was happy to find Looking At You (2014), an older McFarlane novel that I hadn’t read before. Looking At You was fine, but it did feel a little dated and is not on the top of my McFarlane list. Anna Alessi is a history professor in England, forcing herself to go online dating in order to meet the one. She has mostly gotten over a traumatic history of […]

Twin sisters: one American and one Chinese

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbra Demick

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Daughters of the Bamboo Grove (2025) by Barbara Demick is another book I first saw on NPR’s Favorite Books List. Then my husband read it, and he also recommended it to me. Demick is a journalist who was based in China for a number of years. She writes about China’s one-child policy, and how that affected children and families in China. Because of the draconian rules around having too many children, children were being abandoned in growing numbers, especially baby girls. In 1992, China allowed for international […]

Romancing the journalist

Cover Story by Mhairi McFarlane

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I’ve read many books by Mhairi McFarlane and really enjoyed most of them. So, when I saw she had a new book out, Cover Story (2025), I knew I was going to read it. McFarlane writes romance-centric novels but with more developed characters and storylines than you sometimes see in your flimsier romances. McFarlane is Scottish and her books take place in England, so there are a lot of Britishisms and other cultural references that sometimes fly over my head. I still enjoy reading them, though. Bel […]

Lost in the woods

Heartwood by Amity Gaige

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Heartwood (2025) by Amity Gaige is yet another book that I originally saw on NPR’s Favorite Books List. It is about a woman who goes missing on the Appalachian Trail (AT) and the search to find her. Heartwood sounded like something I would like, so I got it from my library back in December. But I was about to do some solo backpacking and camping, and I wisely decided I didn’t want to read a book about a missing hiker while I was sitting alone […]



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