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.

 

“You cannot live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be”

Eleanor by David Michaelis

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The book: Eleanor by David Michaelis is a single-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. Why I read it: I’ve always thought Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the more interesting First Ladies. While I still think that as an adult, as a child a big part of that was from seeing “Annie” so many times. Having grandparents that lived through the Great Depression was part of it, too. When this book was released it seemed to get a certain amount of fanfare–enough, anyway, for me to notice and add […]

Romance Focused on Overcoming Fear

The Wedding Con by Janine Amesta

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Last week I sped-read through Love at First Flight, sinking into the Central Oregon setting and the lives of the Moreno family that Janine Amesta created. It spurred me to pick up the ARC I had of The Wedding Con and get to reading it immediately.  Where Love at First Flight focuses on the grief journeys of its leads, The Wedding Con focuses on fear. Naomi Moreno is the middle sister and had witnessed her father be suckered into get rich quick investment schemes via YouTube […]

hot take yes this is an info dump but also I will mainline more cosmere

Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson

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BINGO: Black, it’s all over this cover There is a lot of telling instead of showing in this book, for an author who is already sort of well known (and, in some circles, sneered at) for being very tell-y. To be fair, I think it’s because Sanderson is very keen on his world and excited to tell us about it! And to be even more fair, I am a little Cosmere gremlin who will never be satisfied with details and arcana, no matter how arcane. […]

“But not everyone has dreams. Some people just are, the way that trees and rocks and rivers are just there without a reason, the rest of the world moving around them.”

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

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CBR17 Bingo: Citizen – Though Cora is a citizen of the United States, her race – as well as the race of the many murdered Asian women in this book – makes everyone around them perceive them as foreigners to the point that they are stripped of the safety that their citizenships were supposed to have given them. Cora works as a crime scene cleaner during the COVID-19 pandemic – after witnessing her sister pushed in front of a train, the gore doesn’t bother her anymore. […]

Not Exactly Mexican Gothic, But Close Enough

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

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cbr17bingo Border Now this was an interesting one.  Mexican Gothic is my jam, and I thought that this would be along that vein, but it turned out to be definitely its own thing – an intriguing cross between fictionalized family lore and magical realism.  And when I looked up the translation of Part Two – El Tragabalas, I discover that it is the book’s title in Spanish, but it is also the title of a fairly well known Mexican movie from the mid-60s, and the […]

Push by Sapphire | The Book behind ‘Precious’

Push by Sapphire

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I think most people have heard of the 2009 film ‘Precious’, even if they haven’t seen it. It’s notorious, one of the most upsetting films of all time. I saw ‘Precious’ two years ago, when I was sixteen and about to start therapy for my own post-traumatic stress. The film hit me hard and incredibly close to home, and I was completely floored. Since then, I have thought of it often. Now nineteen, out of therapy and off medication, I decided to read ‘Push’ – […]



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