Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

More Like Spybrarians

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

by Leave a Comment

I’m a librarian, and I feel like I’m living in resistance to a patriarchal dystopia, so when I came across UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED, a book that touts itself as a story of librarians working in resistance to a patriarchal dystopia but IN AN OLD WEST REVIVAL (derogatory), I decided it was both close enough and far away enough to merit a read. Esther is the daughter of a powerful political man, and has been raised to be a proper daughter of one: she’s betrothed to […]

Antelope Like Phantoms in the Snow

The Crossing by Corman McCarthy

by Leave a Comment

Fair warning here – about half the dialogue is in Spanish.  But with just my many decades old Spanish classes from the dim past, it really wasn’t that hard to follow.  It’s pretty simple, and most of it you can get from context.  But.  So you know.  This is the second book from McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, after All the Pretty Horses.  There is no connection between any of the characters, but the milieu is definitely the same. Billy and Boyd Parham are two brothers, sons […]

A Wonderful Western

Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison

by Leave a Comment

Are you in the mood for a Western with a lady protagonist? Are you a horse girl at heart? Do you love the sweeping vistas of Old Hollywood Westerns but wish there was a little more exploration of patriarchy? Do you love a fully realized girl character using her grit to get things done? Did you enjoy the movie Slow West? Whiskey When We’re Dry is the book for you.  The story is told by Jessilyn Harney, who starts out with her brother and dad, […]

Horsing Around

Tom's Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski

by Leave a Comment

To address the elephant in the room right off the bat, this is a 1200-page novel that is certainly not for everyone. Set in 1982 in the fictional Orvop, Utah (the town name anagrams to Provo), the plot is rather simple for a novel of that length. Two boys who both love horses hatch a plan to save two neglected animals from being slaughtered by the richest man in town. One of the boys, Tom Gatestone, is the son of one of the town’s leading […]

Jack, in his dark camps, saw Ennis as a night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain.

Brokeback Mountain by E. Annie Proulx

by Leave a Comment

Going up, the day was fine but the trail deep-drifted and slopping wet at the margins. They left it to wind through a slashy cut, leading the horses through brittle branchwood, Jack, the same eagle feather in his old hat, lifting his head in the heated noon to take the air scented with resinous lodgepole, the dry needle duff and hot rock, bitter juniper crushed beneath the horses’ hooves. Ennis, weather-eyed, looked west for the heated cumulus that might come up on such a day […]

This is a book that I read.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

by Leave a Comment

I remember watching Lonesome Dove with my grandparents as a child, although I remember absolutely nothing about the plot (I was probably not actually watching, but reading something while it was on in the background). What I remember most is how much my grandparents liked it. A couple years ago I decided maybe I’d try to read the book. I stopped and started at least 3 times, struggling to have any interest in the lives of a couple retired Texas Rangers. It wasn’t until this year, when […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo