Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

About Zirza

CBR 6
CBR 7
CBR 8
CBR 9
CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant
CBR18 Levels

I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with reading stuff and writing about it. I try to keep the bitchiness to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. In my spare time I enjoy complaining about the weather and sleeping. I lack the attention span for good books and the tolerance for bad ones. I am stuck in literary purgatory. Hey, at least it's warm here. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Zirza's Quick Questions interview.)

Zirza's Reviews:

Bruh.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

by 13 Comments

As my kids would say.  A Little Life is a behemoth of a book, focused on the lives of four college friends as they make their way in the world. There’s Willem, attractive and easy-going, who wants to be an actor; Malcolm, an aspiring architect; JB, a promising your artist; and Jude, an enigmatic lawyer with a brilliant mind and a troubled past. We follow their lives as they grapple with fame, addiction, relationships and trauma.  At least, that’s what google will tell you if […]

Weddings: a Bit of a Faff

Husband Material (London Calling #2) by Alexis Hall

by 4 Comments

In Husband Material (predictably the sequel to Boyfriend Material; number three in the series, Father Material, is still pending), Luc and Oliver are still a happy couple. They are thirty-ish, and anyone who is thirty-ish will remember that that is the age at which one seems to have a matrimonial or matrimonially-adjacent activity seemingly every week. There are four in this book. There is also a funeral. The sequence of events naturally leads Luc to the question whether or not he should propose to Oliver. […]

Break your silence if you would/before the sun goes down for good

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

by 2 Comments

It’s 1982, and small-town Viv has big-city ambitions. Mostly, she just wants to get out of the town where she has lived all her life; she has a vague ambition to move to New York and become an actress, so off she goes in spite of her mother’s protestations. One dodgy hitchhiker later and she ends up at the Sun Down Motel, a run down establishment in the town of Fell, New York. The hotel manager offers her free board in exchange for running the […]

“Like eating very expensive chocolate, savouring every moment because you don’t know when you’ll have it again.”

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

by 4 Comments

Luc O’Donnell is the son of two rockstar parents: his mother is a French-Irish (but mostly French) folk singer, his father a legendary rock star who has been absent from Luc’s life since he was a toddler. Luc is, to put it mildly, a mess: when we meet him, he is trying and failing to make out with a guy who turns out to be a Buzzfeed reporter. After the terse encounter ends, Luc flees the club, faceplants outside on the kerb and is promptly […]

Not what Schrödinger had in mind, but I’ll take it

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

by Leave a Comment

Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a local college. He lives in Chicago with his wife Daniela and his son Charlie. Once upon a time, Jason was a promising young scientist, destined for greatness, who gave it all up when his girlfriend turned out to be pregnant. Jason’s life is not unpleasant, but it is dull and sedate and the what-ifs occasionally nag at the back of his head. But then, suddenly, Jason is abducted at gunpoint. His assailant stabs him with a syringe. […]

The Women Come and Go

Insidious Intent (Tony Hill&Carol Jordan #10) by Val McDermid

by Leave a Comment

A car is set ablaze in a lay-by in the rural north of England. Initially, it is thought that it was left there by a couple of carjackers trying to dispose of it, but upon closer inspection, the body of a dead woman is found inside. Police inspector Carol Jordan, head of a newly minted major crimes unit covering several large cities in the north, investigates the crime and with the help of her friend, criminal psychologist Tony Hill, she tries to stop the killer […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo