Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“She felt she was a bottomless pit of memories, and she was only fifteen. What on earth must it be like when you reached the Duchy’s age? You’d hardly be able to think at all for them; it would be like having so much furniture in a room that there was nowhere left to move.”

Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard

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CBR18 Bingo: Season – The Cazalets are coming into a new season of their lives with the war on, the youngest son Rupert away in France, and new members of the family being born while others are dying. World War Two is now on, and come crashing into the lives of the Cazalets, a clan of well-off English wood dealers. However, they still have their own domestic dramas to deal with closer at home. This is the second book in the Cazalet Chronicles- I read the […]

All Roads Lead to the Oedipus Complex

The Fifty-Minute Hour by Robert Lindner

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CBR17 Bingo: Red – Behold, the cover. Robert Lindner, a prominent psychoanalyst during the 1940s, relates five unusual cases he has worked on – a murderer, a Communist, a bulimic, a Fascist, and a physicist who believed he was living a parallel life as overlord of a distant star system. I’m not sure where I heard of this book – most likely through the case of “Kirk Allen,” whose story of science fiction delusion is related in the final chapter of the book. While it […]

Her heart was American

Tokyo Rose - Zero Hour: A Japanese American Woman's Persecution and Ultimate Redemption After World War II by Andre R. Frattino

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The only reason that the graphic novel, Tokyo Rose – Zero Hour: A Japanese American Woman’s Persecution and Ultimate Redemption After World War II by Andre R. Frattino, is not a five rating is because of the illustrations. While it is understandable why they are in black and white, they were not my favorite things for multiple reasons. I know that illustrator Kate Kasenow did a lot of work on them. I appreciate the hard work, the time and even the final result to make […]

“Maybe all I need is a purpose.”

Singing With Elephants by Margarita Engle

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11-year-old Oriol wants to go back to Cuba. Ever since her grandmother died, she’s felt lost at her Santa Barbara, CA home. School is difficult, her older sister has less time for her since she got a boyfriend, and the only place she is truly happy is helping her parents at their veterinarian clinic. This clinic is no ordinary vet: her parents are specialty vets, assisting with wild and unique animals. In a show-biz state like California, they have a lot of work. One day, […]

Alas, Not As Fun As the Last One, Still Can’t Go Wrong with PM.

The Case of the Crooked Candle by Earle Stanley Gardner

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Quick question for any of you nautical types out there.  You can see from the title that a key clue involves a candle.  Said candle has been burning in an interior cabin on a small yacht, completely unattended for a period of time.  Is this a thing, even in the 1940s?  Seriously, Gardner?  Aren’t those vessels infamously, well, woody?  SMH. OK, aside from blatant safety violations, this case had to do with a lot of trotting back and forth along the Ventura coastline, with the […]

Perry Mason without a courtroom in sight. This is a total trip.

The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito - Perry Mason #23 by Erle Stanley Gardener

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cbr square series Well, now, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it?  Man, I love this series, and this one, #23, was just plain fun.  Not a courtroom in sight, and instead of Paul Drake putting in a bit of sleuthing footwork for Perry, he gets to be bait.  A good time was had by all. Banning Clarke and Salty Bowers are a pair of prospectors, seeking lost gold mines in Southern California. (Ahahaha, sure, boys.)  But Banning got mixed up with a wealthy dame (now […]



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