Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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When in doubt, be polite

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Talking to Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Book of Enchantments by Patricia C. Wrede

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I highly recommend this series to adults and children alike.  It feels clean, somehow.  There is good and wickedness, but everything eventually works out.  I would not hesitate to give the main series to my nieces and nephews.  There is a focus on manners and politeness and practicality.  Everyone can learn lessons from this, and even if they are lessons you’ve learned before, it’s good to be reminded! Dealing with Dragons I read this right before I read Ogre Enchanted, which probably was not good for the ogres, seeing as this is so good and that was so disappointing!  I […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/12/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:14 |

When the doorbell rings, no one barks.

Can't and Won't by Lydia Davis

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I don’t buy this one. I did buy, I think, the collected stories that I read last year. In that one, it was 700 or so pages of these kinds of small stories and like this one, the list was long and most of the stories were a paragraph at most and sometimes a sentence too. For some reason, that one more or less worked for me. I think that was I felt at the time was that it was interesting, and I was willing to go with it and suspend my dubious nature for the length of the book. […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/11/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:82 |

She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

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This is a book that takes place in a small Maine town. The central locus of this book is Olive Kitteridge, a retired middle school math teacher with a pharmacist for a husband and a podiatrist for a son. She’s not the center of every single story in the collection, but she is the glue and often the catalyst for them separately and/or together. This is labeled as a “novel in stories” and there’s a lot of different of these floating around. Ultimately I think this book works and is good in spite of this way of looking at it. […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people."

2/9/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:80 |

She was a brilliant painter, really an exceptional artist, and she suffered a lot of pain.

99 Stories of God by Joy Williams

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This is a strange collection of little vignettes and even minor epics. Ostensibly this is a series of stories about God, people interacting with or being touched by God, and in some cases little tongue in cheek conversations with God. This may or may not sound appealing on its face, but the tone of this collection is a little tongue in cheek, with an earnest but not cloying faithfulness and reverence. It’s like if your hippie California aunt who sings in the church choir and is the nicest person in the world wrote a collection of stories. Here’s a few: […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "She was a brilliant painter, really an exceptional artist, and she suffered a lot of pain."

2/9/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:78 |

“Nothing … was private: only secret, only silent. We ate our tears.”

The Birthday of the World and Other Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin

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  This book is so wildly out of my wheelhouse that I don’t really feel qualified to assess it. I’ve almost never read science fiction and rarely read short story collections, and I’m sure I’ve never read a book that was both. There were some stories I loved and some I hated (luckily, the longer novella at the end hit a solid “liked a lot” on that scale), but without a doubt I now have tremendous respect for Le Guin as a writer. It’s astonishing to me that you can take such potent, human concepts as sexuality, adolescence, religion, duty, […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "“Nothing … was private: only secret, only silent. We ate our tears.”"

2/6/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:2 |

Being from Paris means filing her nails to a point and lacquering them to Hemorrhage Red.

The Strange Case of Rachel K by Rachel Kushner

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Also, $20 will buy you this book. This is a tiny hardback edition of three mediocre short stories. They are called “pieces” in this collection, but don’t let that fool you. They are stories, and they are utterly derivative, forgettable, and affected. I have to admit that Rachel Kushner has long been on my list of suspected con-artists when it comes to contemporary fiction. And for once, I don’t think this is a case of being out of my element or not being attuned to the specifics of a genre. Whatever other limitations I have, I generally read a lot […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Being from Paris means filing her nails to a point and lacquering them to Hemorrhage Red."

2/2/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:64 |

The Saddest Bug in the World

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

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I read The Metamorphosis under great duress during both high school and undergrad. I remember despising it both times, and only reading enough to get through class discussion. But my mentor is teaching it this semester, and I’ve had no choice but to revisit it. It’s amazing how much perspective a decade and a half can give. I loved this novella, and aside from general immaturity and lack of language skills, I don’t know why I was so vehemently against this story in the past. Gregor the beetle is the most pitiful, sad character on the planet, and for most of the […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "The Saddest Bug in the World"

1/31/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:8 |

Little by little, sales went back down.

Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin

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I have a secret to tell you. I have a terrible gauge on whether or not I am enjoying a book as I am reading it. So I am likely to continue pushing myself through a book regardless of whether or not I want to be reading it at all. Partially this is because I have the ability (as a practiced English major) to force myself to get through books I am struggling with…I once “read” all of Henry James’s The Bostonians for a class by skipping all the narration and only reading the dialogue…. So when I tell you that […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Little by little, sales went back down."

1/30/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:58 |


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