Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search

A first female wheelchair athlete

The Girl Who Figured It Out: The Inspiring True Story of Wheelchair Athlete Minda Dentler Becoming an Ironman World Champion by Minda Dentler

by Leave a Comment

The story The Girl Who Figured It Out: The Inspiring True Story of Wheelchair Athlete Minda Dentler Becoming an Ironman World Champion by illustrator Stephanie Dehennin and author Minda Dentler (the Minda Dentler of the story) is not necessarily a new idea as we have had stories about people overcoming the odds due to race, gender and disabilities before. However, Dentler’s story is unique because it is hers. It is also unique because I have never really seen a book that had  this exact subject. […]

If You Want Your Heart To Grow Three Sizes

The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory by Thomas Fuller

by Leave a Comment

I had purchased this book for a gift for my younger sister, who was a deaf ed instructor and interpreter for many years.  She lent it back to me, and gave it a massive thumbs up, and I immediately saw why once I started reading it.  It covers two seasons of football for the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, California (CSDR).  Spoiler alert, they came up second best the first year and won the state championship the second.  It was written by a […]

A bit uneven but the sections that work are so illuminating

Poets Square by Courtney Gustafson

by Leave a Comment

I saw this because another Cannonballer reviewed it and thought it sounded interesting, especially since I fostered kittens last year (due to personal circumstances wasn’t able to this year but hopefully I will again soon). It’s a memoir of someone who moved into a house that had a large feral cat colony nearby, and she quickly found herself deeper and deeper into cat rescue and trap and release, helped by the internet and a few viral moments. While I was mostly interested in the cat […]

We All Know MLMs Are A Bummer, But Here Is More Proof

Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read

by 1 Comment

Best for: Those interested in a compelling history of pyramid schemes and their evolution into multi-level marketing schemes. In a nutshell: Author Read provides the history of pyramid schemes and the modern turn to MLMs, framed on the backdrop of a Mary Kay consultant named Monique. Worth quoting: “We are taken care of as consumers, not as human beings.” Why I chose it: I find MLMs disgusting and fascinating. Review: What an great read. Author Read took a topic that is definitely intriguing, but managed […]

“All the stories had a common thread—that somehow the victims had brought the murders on themselves…”

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry

by Leave a Comment

Full disclosure: I went into this book with a slight bias. My mother and my grandmother saw Vincent Bugliosi give a lecture about the Manson trial at the University my mother was attending, so I had a second-hand opinion on the man himself; my grandmother thought him wonderful, my mother thought him a fascist. The majority of the talk was comprised of two facts: his wonderfulness, and how the “Manson girls”, as he called them, were all laughing it up in Country Club prisons, playing […]

Shine on, Sister

What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella

by 1 Comment

What Does It Feel Like? is Sophie Kinsella’s swan song: her deeply personal reckoning with a terminal stage-4 glioblastoma diagnosis, which tragically took her life recently. I grew up inhaling the Shopaholic series – stories about a woman who believed the right blue silk scarf could change everything. On the surface, those books are light and effervescent, but beneath them runs a thread of genuine terror that anyone who has ever let a credit card spiral out of control will recognise. Kinsella wrote flawed but […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo