Cannonball Read 10

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Tracy

Knitter. Anosmic. Cat lover. I'm also bad at writing these things, which probably doesn't bode well for my reviews.

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Tracy's Reviews:

A Pair of Novels About Equestrians

Riding Lessons; Flying Changes by Sara Gruen

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The main character for both novels is Annemarie Zimmer. In Riding Lessons, she starts out as an 18-year-old equestrian who is an Olympic contender. Then she and her horse are in a horrific accident during a jumping event. It kills her horse and comes very close to paralyzing Annemarie. This all happens at the beginning of the book, and then it jumps forward 20 years. Annemarie has just lost her job, her husband has left her, she has a very difficult relationship with her teenage daughter, and then she finds out that her father has ALS. She and her daughter Eva […]

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5/28/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:13 |

Memoir about Trauma, Shame, Food, and Body

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

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When she was 12 years old, Roxane Gay was gang-raped by a group of boys from school, one of whom was a boy she had sort of been dating and loved. After that, she set out to eat and eat until her body was a “fortress” that could protect her and couldn’t be hurt. This was interesting for me to read because of the multiple lenses through which I was viewing it. There was the psychologist part of me who had a sort of detached interest in noting the effects of Gay’s trauma, though also still being very saddened by […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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5/20/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:11 |

Novel Within a Novel

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

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Since I started Cannonball Read, I’ve tended to think, to varying degrees, about what I might write in a review as I’ve read each book. I didn’t do that much with this one, which I think is a testament to how engrossing it was. The main narrative frame is from the perspective of Iris Griffen (née Chase), a widowed woman in her 80s who has a heart condition and is trying to document her life before she dies: “It’s a slow race now, between me and my heart, but I intend to get there first. Where is there? The end, […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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5/13/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:10 |

A Bible for Cat Training

The Trainable Cat: A Practical Guide to Making Life Happier for You and Your Cat by John Bradshaw and Sarah Ellis

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 Cats are jerks. Don’t get me wrong – I have 3, they’re adorable, and I love them to pieces. Cats are rewarding pets, but there are definitely cat owners out there who would agree that it’s a good thing cats are cute because they can be obnoxious. I’m hoping this book will help with that. It’s phenomenal and wasn’t remotely dry, perhaps because I was thinking about how I could apply what I was reading to my own cats. I underlined a lot of the material and found it valuable and interesting right from the start, even in the introduction […]

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Purchase The Trainable Cat: A Practical Guide to Making Life Happier for You and Your Cat by John Bradshaw and Sarah Ellis or any item from amazon via our link.

Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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4/14/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:9 |

Stories About Technology and Discovery

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

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 The e-book version that I got from my library was actually titled Arrival, with the note that it had been previously published as Stories of Your Life, and I got it because I wanted to read the story that the movie Arrival was based on, so I’ll start with that one. It’s titled “Story of Your Life,” and it’s good. I think the movie is better, which I don’t usually think, but I also don’t usually see the movie before reading the book. I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, so all I’ll say is that there are […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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4/2/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:8 |

Wonderfully Creative

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

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I really enjoyed this book. Coming in at under 150 pages, it’s a quick read, which is good because I just wanted to keep going, especially once the characters were on their journey to Camazotz. I recalled reading this novel twice before, once in elementary school when I didn’t really “get” it, and I don’t recall how I viewed it upon my second reading, but this time I got it (although I’m still not sure just how much tesseracts make sense to me as used in this novel) and appreciated it. Many of you probably know the plot by now, […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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3/25/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:7 |

Dirk Gently Is at It Again . . . Sort of

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

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This one started off much less confusingly (and weirdly) than the first book, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, though it didn’t necessarily end less confusingly. Part of the problem is that the ending seemed rushed, as though Adams were trying to get it done in a hurry, and he sacrificed quality and clarity to do so. Once again, the book doesn’t really seem to be about Dirk Gently, although he is a main character, and this time he doesn’t seem to do as much in terms of affecting the resolution. There are two mysteries that he is trying to solve. The first is […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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3/18/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:6 |

There Was a Horse in the Bathroom

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

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This was a weird one. It started off weird and although it made much more sense by the end, I still had to look up explanations for some of what happened. A few questions remain, some of which are too spoilery to describe. Speaking of, how does one describe this book? That’s more than just a rhetorical question – I’m really not sure. The first several chapter seem disjointed, but later you learn how they are all connected (although I still don’t understand the first line of “This time there would be no witnesses,” so if any of you have […]

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Purchase Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams or any item from amazon via our link.

Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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3/2/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:5 |


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