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.

 

No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you’ll never see reflected what’s inside.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

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To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running CBR17 Bingo: Culture This book discusses a runner’s mentality as well as running culture. As an avid reader of Haruki Murakami, I’ve been meaning to check this book off of my list for going on ten years. I wondered though if his nonfiction could hold up […]

This Mess is Pretty Neat

Mess by Michael Chessler

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The colorful cover of the book and its glitzy (and ditzy) Hollywood backdrop easily lure the reader in, for a quick beach or travel read. The chapters are set up as vignettes to showcase various Hollywood types and their messy lives – and how heroine Jane, a professional organizer (think a cross between a celebrity assistant and a devotee of lifestyle guru Marie Kondo), can brave the traffic of Los Angeles freeways and twisty/turny roads in the Hollywood Hills to save them all. Author Mike […]

Refusing to conform to stereotypical gender norms on two different continents

My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende

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3.5 stars Thanks to Netgalley and RandomHouse for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Emilia del Valle Claro grows up in San Francisco in the latter half of the 19th Century. Her mother, Molly, is of Irish descent and was a nun before she was seduced by an unscrupulous young Chilean aristocrat, who left her pregnant and entirely without support (she obviously had to leave the convent). She married Francisco Claro, the intelligent and kind-hearted teacher at the Aztec Pride School, and he’s the […]

A new spin on an old idea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

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Moreno Garcia does an amazing job setting the right mood in this newer gothic tale. Set in Mexico in the 1950’s, you forget that the world is more modern than what Noemi Taboada experiences. Having grown up in Mexico City to an affluent family, Noemi’s life is more about finding a worthy suitor and getting married than education or developing skills to join the workforce. Despite this, Noemi is a confident, charming, smart woman who would like to study at the University. While she enjoys […]

Carrie-ish

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson

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I saw Spaceballs before I saw Star Wars. I saw Robin Hood, Men in Tights before I saw Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. And I read The Weight of Blood before I read Carrie. And honestly, I think I made the right choice! I can’t imagine reading a story like Carrie from the perspective of a white guy in the 1970s, no matter how many times he claps back at JKR. I had some preconceived notions about this book – mainly I thought it was […]

Confronting the Past

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

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Bingo: Diaspora. This book about American slavery ties to the African diaspora that occurred due to the transatlantic slave trade. The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. The history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories.” Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History […]



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