Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“She longed for an opportunity to demonstrate her own resourcefulness.”

The Runaway Duke by Julie Anne Long

by Leave a Comment

Plot: Rebecca is a gently bred lady, sort of. Her mother did try, and it helps that she has grown up isolated on a large property with limited access to trouble. But whatever trouble she could dig up, she would. Rebecca is bursting at the seams for a true challenge, and with frustration over her impossible dream to become a doctor. Her father, at least, gives her the run of the place, and lets her do as she’d like, sort of. It meant that she […]

“You can’t protect people, kiddo,” Wally said. “All you can do is love them.”

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

by Leave a Comment

Picked up this old gem for book club to see how we’d experience a book as adults that we last read as high schoolers. I don’t recall disliking it originally, but man did it blow me out of the water this time around. Plot: In a rural part of Maine there is an orphanage called St Clouds. Dr Wilbur Larch, who runs the orphanage, is something of a lowkey celebrity because when women come to his orphanage pregnant, he gives them what they want – […]

“I’ve seen what you read on your Kindle. You’re in no place to judge.”

Out on a Limb by Hannah Bonam Young

by Leave a Comment

A story about an unintended pregnancy, and learning that allowing people to help you does not make you a leech. Plot: Win is a young woman still looking to find her place in the world. She has a limb difference with creates some challenges with some fine mobility tasks, but she absolutely hates being treated differently because of it. She can do just about anything anyone else can, even if it requires a bit of clever ingenuity to accomplish sometimes. One does wonder then, how […]

The scream that brought them together

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

by Leave a Comment

I’m completing my quarter cannonball with The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill. The novel is a book within a book. Hannah is writing a mystery focused on Freddie, an Australian woman on a writing fellowship in Boston. She meets three strangers in the Boston library reading room: Cain, a fellow writer and handsome, Walt, a rich law student with no work ethic, and Marigold, a goth-esque psychology student. They hear a blood-curdling scream like someone being murdered…but no body is found. That is, […]

The biggest struggle in earning your freedom is feeling like you deserve it.

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen

by 4 Comments

What if some people from the past returned to the present? What if one of them was Harriet Tubman? Bob the Drag Queen imagines a world in which Harriet Tubman, her brother Moses, and some of their Underground Railroad crew return to the present (as does Fredrick Douglass) and they want to tell their story in the form of a show. They hire a songwriter who once won Grammys. His career was torpedoed when he was outted on live tv. Harriet and her crew demolish […]

The Importance of Being Earnest

Quarterly Essay No. 100 – The Good Fight by Sean Kelly

by Leave a Comment

The Good Fight examines Anthony Albanese’s Labor government as it moves through its second term. Kelly argues that the Prime Minister has built his leadership style, and the modern Labor movement more broadly, around kindness, collaboration, and a soft-spoken civility. These qualities have distinguished him from his predecessors and resonated with voters who were weary of political combat. But Kelly questions whether this gentler approach has blunted Labor’s sense of purpose. His central claim is that Albanese’s government suffers from a lack of belief: it […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo