Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This is what I would say if I could, to all the smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

by Leave a Comment

I know that this novel is a contemporary spin on Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. In fact, almost everything written about this book centers around that comparison. I guess that her naming of the main character (also the title of the book) makes that discussion unavoidable. But, I would argue that a lot of Kingsolver novels are Dickensian: following the lives of people who are often dismissed as unintelligent, unapproachable, and strange. People who are held responsible for their own misfortune. People that are kept in […]

It was beautiful, and then somebody else, the rest of the world, made it not beautiful.

Now Is Not The Time To Panic by Kevin Wilson

by Leave a Comment

I used to spend a month every summer visiting my dad in a household that was absolutely free-range. It was the late 1970s and early 1980s so that wasn’t that unusual, but it was certainly a more unsupervised and fend-for-yourself-until-dinner situation than I experienced with my mother. I have very distinct memories from that time, hanging out across the street with a neighborhood girl my age. Both of her parents worked so we would spend all day in the air conditioning watching MTV, drinking (sometimes […]

The whole world is a nerd.

Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell

by Leave a Comment

I’m waiting for Rowell to send another satisfyingly awkward love story (without magic and told mostly with words and not pictures) out into the world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the Simon Snow books. I also enjoyed Pumpkinhead even though graphic novels really aren’t my thing. But, I yearn for books like Eleanor and Park and Fangirl and Attachments. So, I attempted to scratch that itch with this set of short stories. I had read a couple of these in other collections […]

Justice and the law aren’t the same thing.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

by Leave a Comment

I have read nearly all of Deanna Raybourn’s books and this one is a definite departure from her usual historical fiction. However, she keeps her penchant for mystery solving shenaningans here, and her trademark sense of humor is intact. Just a wee bit snarkier. Four retiring lady assassins are invited by their former employer to literally sail into the next phase of their lives aboard a complimentary cruise. How are former assassins allowed to just retire and sail off into the sunset, you ask? Well, […]

Grief As A Creative Force

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

by Leave a Comment

I honestly don’t remember where I first heard about this book – Instagram? One of the dozens of bookish emails I seem to get every single day? Maybe just scrolling through the Libby app? However it came into my life, I am really glad it did. This one is about Magos and Joseph and their son, Santiago, who has just died when the book opens. He was born with only one lung, and after his body finally gives out, Magos, in her grief, removes a […]

A positive reaction

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

by Leave a Comment

This delightful little story was gifted to me by a colleague for my birthday, with the promise that ‘it’s not a chemistry textbook’. Too right! Rather, it’s the tale of Chemist Elizabeth Zott – a fiercely intelligent woman who is up against it in the 1960s, trying to be taken seriously as a chemist despite her gender. She is belittled, bullied, and outright assaulted… yet never waivers in her devotion to science or her resolve to make her mark. It is during her tenure at […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo