Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“I was fifteen when I decided to go to America and make a name for myself,” Allen Say

The Inker's Shadow by Allen Say

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When I learned that Drawing from Memory by Allen Say had a sequel called The Inker’s Shadow I went into “Find This Book” Mode. And interlibrary loan did not let me down. Now, this book is a lot like the first, but deals with his years in the states. It moves a bit faster, covers more ground and years and fills in the information that shows how he was shaped into the author and illustrator that he would become. It is not just a great […]

She ain’t no Pretty Pink Pretty princess

Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince

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I almost did not read the graphic novel, Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir. I had seen it on lists, at the library, and other places. But it never said, “Read me.” Then one day I was looking at my library’s online catalog of titles to request a book. When I clicked “place hold” and it was complete, a list of suggested books appeared to read while waiting for the request you put in. One was Tomboy. I figured that if I had been getting signs saying […]

When your duet partner chirps

Beatrice and the Nightingale by Patricia Newman and Isabelle Follath

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You ever read a book that was not Best Book Ever, but there was something about it that really hit you, that really made you feel, you really enjoyed, you got into, that gave you something? Beatrice and the Nightingale by Patricia Newman and Isabelle Follath was that book for me. I read it via an online reader copy, it will come out in mid February 2026 and I might get a finished copy. The idea is simple: a young girl from a musical family […]

“She writes that she will walk across the ocean to be with her lover. He sees this, not as a declaration of love, but as a statement of a single-mindedness so total that a kind of grandeur creeps into it.”

In Pursuit of Love: A Journey in the Footsteps of Obsession by Mark Bostridge

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CBR17 Bingo: I – Re: the title. Victor Hugo was the most famous writer in the world when his daughter, Adèle, left their home in Guernsey on a years-long mad pursuit of a former lover. Centuries later, author Mark Bostridge retraces her steps and tries to understand her obsession in the prism of his own life. I have not seen acclaimed 1975 film The Story of Adele H., so this was my first real acquaintance with the strange life of Adèle Hugo, whose story was […]

The woman who made snow in Puerto Rico and other amazing things

Doña Fela's Dream: The Story of Puerto Rico's First Female Mayor by Monica Brown

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Women have been out and about in the political world since politics started. But they just never get the credit they deserve. Like Felisa Rincaon de Gautier or more commonly known as Dona Fela. She was a young woman during the time when many women, even those of privilege, could not read and none had the right to vote. She saw this injustice (and others) and helped where she could well into her adulthood. One day, after a tragic event, she would be asked to […]

A beat-up book that made me think people need this book

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. by Kristen Radtke

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If you want to feel really bad about yourself, read Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. Or, just as likely, if you want to feel great about yourself, read this graphic novel by Kristen Radtke. There are some contradictions, some places you will see yourself and see friends and/or family. It is slow reading, but busy. The book’s theme is, as the title says, about loneliness. Radtke talks about how it has its has ups and downs, in an almost poetic fashion with both […]



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