Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Timeless Play about Love and Gay Life

Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein

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Bingo: Favorite. One of my favorite movies of all time is Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy. I have read the play and loved it too; this is a favorite reread. I moved to San Francisco from New York in 1990 when I was 21 years old. One of my first friends made me dinner one night and showed me his favorite movie, Torch Song Trilogy. It was love at first watch for me. It was so funny and heartbreaking and real. The written play is […]

“But still, still, it was a time she missed, a place she’d fly back to in a heartbeat”

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

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Bingo: Recommended. A book tokker I enjoy highly recommended this book Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is one of those books that is so good, that immerses you so much, and touches you somewhere so old and grief-laden, that it’s hard to write the review. It’s one of those things where you have so much to say but without the faith you can say it right. The book flip flops between the mid eighties/early nineties and 2015. The eighties portion follows Yale, a young gay […]

In a Hopeless Place

Woodworking by Emily St. James

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Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: citizen. One of the major subplots involves the characters in this book using their rights as citizens to rally around a longshot candidate they want to try and elect. There has never been an easy time for trans people. That wasn’t true in the 1990s. That wasn’t true before Trump I or Trump II. That’s not true today. Depending on where people live, there have been times that are less bad. But never a time that has been “good.” […]

I Felt It In My Soul

So Thrilled For You by Holly Bourne

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Best for: Any woman with friends. Any woman who has had kids. Any woman who has friends who have had kids. But a content note that there is a lot of discussion around birth trauma and also post-natal depression. In a nutshell: The ‘Little Women’ are four friends who met at university. One (Lauren) has an infant child, one (Nicki) is eight months pregnant, one (Charlotte) has been dealing with infertility for years, and one (Steffi) is childfree by choice. They gather for Nicki’s baby […]

The title was the coolest thing about this book

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington

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CBR Bingo: Border (characters have to sneak over several country borders, and there is also a threat of invasion due to the weakening of a magical barrier) I really enjoyed James Islington’s The Will of the Many when I read it a few years ago, and I have been eagerly awaiting the follow-up The Strength of the Few. I’ve had the author’s first series The Licanius Trilogy, which starts with The Shadow of What Was Lost, on my TBR for some time now (it’s been on my […]

“All hail wossname, who shall be king here, after”

Sourcery by Terry Pratchett

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

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CBR Bingo: School (Sourcery is set at the Unseen University, a college for wizards (although not much actual learning goes on)) CBR Bingo: Arts (I’m counting theatre as being artsy, a key component to Wyrd Sisters are actors and plays, and how they can impact public perception of events) I’d recently read the first three books in the Discworld series, and have decided to keep going in publication order, rather than breaking it up by sub-series. Sort of. I’ve read the Death novels too recently to want to re-read […]



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