Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A magical love letter to NYC

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

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New York City has been born as a great city of the world and she has chosen her avatar. This happens from time to time as enough people and ideas coalesce in one spot. It happened to Rio de Janerio, to Hong Kong, to London, and many more. And now it’s happening to New York. Except this time, one single person is not embodying the entire city like has always been the case. Instead there is an additional avatar for each of the five boroughs […]

like passing notes in high school English with your nerdy, austen-obsessed friend

The Annotated Pride and Prejudice by David M. Shapard, Jane Austen

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Goodreads really wants to slot this in with a regular copy of Pride and Prejudice, and to be fair you are reading a copy of Pride and Prejudice when you read this. In my case, it’s been so long since I’ve read this book and I have watched so many snippets of the 1995 BBC version and the 2005 Keira Knightley version since that there were multiple, multiple times that I thought I was reading some sort of “newly discovered passages!” version of the book. […]

Sounds like a cult…

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

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Oh, gosh, where to start! Language is an endlessly fascinating subject to me. What words we use, where those words came from and why we use the ones we use when we use them. Language is the foundation of culture and is used to include or divide, which seems super obvious but also begs the question of why? Why do certain words, in certain contexts evoke a particular response for certain people? Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell doesn’t attempt to provide an answer but […]

Two sisters, two different directions

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

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I noticed The Vanishing Half ages ago, but there was always a ridiculously long wait for it at the library. I think I first saw it on NPR’s Best Books of 2020 and it seemed like a must-read book, so I began it with relatively high expectations. In the end, I was pretty impressed. The novel covers the 1950’s to the 1990’s and follows a number of different characters. At first, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get into it, but I thought Bennett did a really good […]

Going West by Heading East

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

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The Lincoln Highway was the first Trans-continental highway for cars in the United States. Between Laramie, WY and Cheyenne, WY on I-80, there is a bust of Abraham Lincoln that originally marked the highest point of elevation on the Lincoln Highway between New York and San Francisco. None of that is relevant in The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, I just like the fun factedness of it all. Eighteen-year-old Emmett and eight-year-old Billy Watson have nothing to hold them to the farm in Nebraska. Their father […]

Cute Sapphic Cheerleader-Quarterback YA!

Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler

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This is a delight, which I knew it would be after loving Dahlia Adler’s Cool for the Summer last year. Amber has dreams of becoming cheer captain and being able to get a scholarship so she can go to college away from Atherton and be able to be out and openly date girls. But while she’s still in high school, she and her best friend Miguel are each other’s beard, especially after Miguel had been blackmailed, to make sure if the blackmailer tried to out […]



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