Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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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.

 

How Edith Wharton was ahead of her time.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

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I’ve been trying to read more of my physical books, especially older ones purchased decades ago at warehouse sales, secondhand bookstores (which feel like dying business in my part of the world), and from the lovely global community that was BookMooch. The Age of Innocence was one purchased from a Penguin warehouse sale, and its cover is just so lovely (see this link). It’s 1870s, and Newland Archer is rich, educated, and a little bored, so he decides marriage is a good way to not […]

“The trouble with believing things is that they have an annoying habit of turning out not to be true”

The October Girl: Book One by Matthew Dow Smith

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I first heard of The October Girl at an event at my local indie bookstore. They were booktalking recent and soon-to-be published books and this was one of them. I enjoy reading a graphic novel from time to time and the plot seemed interesting too. Autumn Ackerman is about to graduate high school and isn’t sure what she wants to do with her life. With little money, she and her mom working hard, college doesn’t feel like an option. But things change when her imaginary […]

Voted “The Most Beautiful Baby in Hong Kong” in 1947 – and He Was!

Vagabond: A Memoir by Tim Curry

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cbr18bingo Card – Clown (Because, c’mon, Pennywise!) There are two Muppet movies that will always make me squee, because of their human costars.  The first is Christmas Carol with Michael Caine, and the second is Treasure Island with Tim Curry.  (An astute critic remarked that the first one works because Caine never treats his costars as anything other than human, while the second succeeds because Curry is a Muppet).  If there is a comic villain needed, Curry is your man.  What I had no idea […]

A witch is simply a woman who listens to her intuition

First Witches Club by Maisey Yates

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If you’re looking for a cozy-ish read about women learning how to live for themselves and get revenge, this is it. We meet each of our three main characters fairly early in the book, but it’s basically Nora’s story. Her husband has just left her for a wellness retreat in Chile to “find himself”. Nora tries to convince herself for a lot of the book that her marriage is fine, and she’s just helping out her new friends with their failing marriages. She reconnects with […]

Nerds vs Nazis

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham

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As promised by the title, Graham’s Book and Dagger delivers plenty of stories of academics and librarians helping the Allies in World War II through espionage and other covert ways. As the book notes, the best spy isn’t someone dashing like a James Bond. It’s someone who can’t even get a waiter’s attention. Bring in the nerds! No one can get away with collecting books, or asking questions about train gauges, or fiddling with a dam, quite like a nerd. In my mind, though, the […]

“Grind culture is violence and violence creates trauma. We have been traumatized deeply.”

Rest is Resistance: a Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

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Back when I still participated in Twitter, I had been following Tricia Hersey’s The Nap Ministry for years and years. As I’ve unpacked my likely (but not official) autism diagnosis, masking, burnout, depression, burnout, disability, and generally not functioning at the speed that the white supremacist capitalistic hellscape we live in would like me to her rallying cry of rest has resonated greatly. I have pushed back on the demands for my time and energy and routinely schedule what I call sloth weekends where I […]



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