Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

No, I think you’re highly intelligent. It’s not lucky for you, in a lot of ways. If you were a little bit stupider you might have an easier life.

Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney

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CBR13 BINGO: Reader’s Choice (in the New Series Square) BINGO! Book Club Square to Machinery Square I don’t think that I have ever had this much of a love/hate reaction to a book. Truly. Everything that I loved about Rooney’s Normal People is here. All of the awkwardness and raw emotion. Everything that I really didn’t like about Conversations with Friends is here too. All of the self indulgent naval gazing histrionics. Ugh. The plot is not complex even if the characters think that they are. The entire story revolves around four […]

“I’m no expert, but I remember reading somewhere, every time you retrieve a memory, that act of retrieval, it corrupts the memory a little bit. Maybe changes it a little.”

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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In one word: Unexpected Cannonball Read Bingo: Rep I was a huuuuuge fan of Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” (I mean, weren’t we all?). It was truly perfection, a triumph in storytelling in my favorite genre of post-apocalyptic literature. And so, I was equal parts excited and nervous to read her new book. Would I be disappointed? I talked to a few people before I read it and they all echoed the same exact thing: this book is NOTHING like the other book, and […]

It was happening again. Another fight with narrow-minded, hateful people.

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

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CBR BINGO: Shelfie (because I had this sitting on my shelf wayyyyyyy past it’s library due date.) Book 3 in the Court of Thorns and Roses DID NOT DISAPPOINT. Breaking what I call “the third book slump” in most series, this book was by far my favorite. My devotion to these characters is getting deep, people. I’m in Outlander love territory here. I can see its shortcomings. I recognize the sometimes messy history and repetitive phrasing, but, I’m all in. This is a book about […]

A modern view of Greek myths

Circe by Madeline Miller

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This was a double book club book for me. My college book club picked it, and then my local club read it as well (because I suggested it). So Book Club square on the Bingo for this one. I was vaguely aware of the story of Circe from the Odyssey, she was a sorceress on an island that Odysseus and his ships stopped at, and she turned the men to pigs. This is (apparently) a feminist retelling. As it is a retelling of an old […]

Another view of Australian history

A room made of leaves by Kate Grenville

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My local book club chose A room made of leaves by Kate Grenville for our last meeting. This was totally going to be a bingo square for book club, and then i realised the flora on the cover. So, Flora bingo space it is!It’s an odd little book club, started by a group of women who went to teacher training college in the late 60s. They remained in intermittent/inconsistent touch with each other, forming the book club a few years ago. Then the daughter of […]

Tense and Suspenseful

The Janes by Louisa Luna

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CBR Bingo: Landscape My whole plan this year of picking up series I’d abandoned kind of got, well, abandoned when Bingo started, but I was glad I found a square for this series as I enjoyed the first book quite a bit. Series: Alice Vega. This is Book #2, I read (and reviewed) Book #1 in 2020. What I remembered about this series prior to reading this book: I remembered the two main characters, Alice Vega (the no-nonsense, prone to explosive violence PI) and Max […]



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