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.

 

Hubris and the British Empire, a Match Made in Heaven

Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin

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Erebus tells the story of the eponymous ship, part of the British Imperial navy at the height of its power. Though it was originally meant for combat, it was used for exploration – polar exploration, to be precise. It was first sailed to the south pole by James Clark Ross, with its sister ship HMS Terror, for a very successful exploration: geographical landmarks still bear their names (Mount Terror and Mount Erebus). However, the ships’ glory came to an abrupt halt several years later in […]

“That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight”

All The Way To The River (2025) by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Bingo square: RED (as in red flag as well as the cover). Content note: Cancer, death, drug addiction, abuse. I picked this book up because I read the excerpts elsewhere, and I was curious about the bigger picture–and also my thesis was on elegy, poems about dead people, and some of the questions that poets ask about how to remember the dead rather than create the dead in their own image still resonate with me. In Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search For Everything Across […]

90s Pop Culture Drama FTW

Hits, Flops and Other Illusions by Ed Zwick

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Recently, a Gwyneth Paltrow biography was published and people were only too happy to revisit and re-examine the old gossip about the friendship breakdown between Paltrow and our 90s queen Winona Ryder. One of the articles referenced an excerpt from Ed Zwick’s memoir. The excerpt was about his struggle to get Shakespeare in Love made, although it was primarily focused on the behind the scenes drama associated with the original cast, focusing on a young Julia Roberts. It all read as very juicy and 90s, […]

Not Enough Beatrice and Benedick, Way Too Much Claudio

Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare

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cbr17bingo – play (spoilers aplenty ahead) I hate Claudio. I feel like that shouldn’t be my takeaway from this play, but here we are. The play centers largely on Claudio and Hero, who early in the play are engaged to be wed. Beatrice and Benedick are the secondary enemies-to-lovers couple, but I can certainly see why some productions of the play choose to emphasize their role because by modern-day standards, the Claudio/Hero relationship is somewhat unpalatable. Claudio is a favorite of the prince Don Pedro, […]

“Kids do well when they can.”

The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene

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Cannonball Read Bingo: Family “Behaviorally challenging kids are challenging because they’re lacking the skills to not be challenging.” This book is geared toward parents of “explosive” children: the kids whose emotional outbursts and out-of-control behaviors are becoming exhausting and overwhelming to everyone in the house. Greene suggests that these problems are caused by “lagging skills” and “unsolved problems,” not by the kid’s desire to be difficult. He then lays out a model that helps parents guide their children in developing these lagging skills and understand […]

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

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Trigger warning: Animal death, cannibalism, and gore. Bless Rachel Harrison for always showing us the folly of bad marriages and toxic friendships. I really did enjoy this book, but thought the ending was so unrealistic and very unsatisfying. I wish Harrison had gone as darker as she had with the ending of The Return. And I think that she didn’t delve enough into Sloane/Naomi’s messed up friendship. That said, I did enjoy this. So Thirsty follows Sloane who is leaving to go out of town […]



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