Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Her only short story

Recitatif by Toni Morrison

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Recitatif is Toni Morrison’s only short story. Published in 1983, the version I read was republished in 2022 and featured an introduction by Zadie Smith (the introduction was longer than the short story). I often regret reading introductions before I read the main story because I usually prefer to have my own thoughts and impressions when reading something new. On the other hand, I probably notice and take more in when I’ve been primed by an introduction. Anyway, Zadie Smith’s introduction was very smart and thoughtful. […]

“I deserve to be seen. To be noticed. To be heard. To be treated like a human.”

Starfish by Lisa Fipps

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This is a very good novel told in free verse poems from the point of view of Ellie, who is about to enter sixth grade and whose best friend is moving away. She is fat and her mother is determined for her to lose weight by any means necessary, and she keeps pushing Ellie to get weight loss surgery. Ellie is also bullied at school for being fat and then the bullying continues at home by her mother and brother. Her sister also joins in […]

The burden and the gift of knowing one’s history

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes

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The Deep is a novel inspired by a song by the rappers known as clipping  (Diggs, Hutson and Snipes). It is the story of Yetu, a 34-year-old wajinru (mer-person) who serves as her people’s historian, and of the burden that this vocation entails. It is also the story of the enslaved people of the Americas and of the trauma handed down through generations. The sea-dwelling people known as wajinru were born from a traumatic experience: their foremothers were land-dwelling women who had been enslaved and […]

A Woman is a Mule, or “What’s in that trunk, Adelaide?”, or a Novel of Second Chances

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

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I met Victor LaValle at a literary fest a few years ago. While handing him a copy of The Changeling, which was his latest novel at the time and the book I had just finished reading, I said to him, “I feel like I’m the person you’re writing these books for. You’re writing these books for me.” And I meant it then and I mean it now. There’s a point at which LaValle started writing the books he knew he was meant to write (he has […]

Mind? Blown.

The Tree by Colin Tudge

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Well, I started this book knowing very little in the way of botany, and I feel compelled to point out the process of placing plants into various families is Seriously Bonkers, to use the scientific term.  The two biggest families are, in layman’s terms, the roses and the daisies.  But the roses also include grape vines, cabbages, oak trees, and rubber trees, while the daisies have carrots, coffee, ash trees, and olive trees for relatives.  Apparently it all has to do with DNA, but wow.  […]

Lawns are dead, man

Lawns Into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape by Owen Wormser

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This short, easy to read volume is a call to arms to put away your lawn mower and embrace a less tidy meadow. Owen Wormser is a landscape designer in the US Northeast, specializing in organic designs for residential and commercial spaces. Mowed lawn space across the US works out to roughly the equivalent of the state of Washington. Lawns were once a status symbol: owning land that didn’t need to be used for food production was a flex. While lawns can be beautiful, they’re […]



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