Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Very unlike my own adolescence

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

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#CBR12 Bingo: Nostalgia (set in the 1990s, when I was a teenager) Official book description: Angus: My mixed-breed cat, half domestic tabby, half Scottish wildcat. The size of a small Labrador, only mad.   Thongs: Stupid underwear. What’s the point of them, anyway? They just go up your bum, as far as I can tell.   Full-Frontal Snogging: Kissing with all the trimmings, lip to lip, open mouth, tongues … everything.   Her dad’s got the mentality of a Teletubby (only not so developed). Her cat, […]

Claudia and the Story of Boys Will be Boys

Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls by Ann M. Martin

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Boy oh boy am I behind in my reviews! Whatever could be distracting me? Pandemic perhaps?? I have it in my head that I shouldn’t be reading new books until I’ve reviewed the old ones which is causing some counter productivity but NO MAS. Gonna get these down and raise my head high. I’m not typically one for YA or youth books, but decided in this time of chaos to pick up a new hobby, specifically, read the Baby-sitters Club books on Facebook Live to […]

A Small and Compelling Fictional Look at 90s Startup Culture

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

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AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire” is one of my all-time favorite shows. When it recently ended (and stuck the landing, might I add) I was craving something very niche – a humane look at the tech world in the 1990s, and the people in that world. Thank goodness for the Net, because the Halt and Catch Fire’s subreddit developed a recommended reading list. That’s how I found writer/artist Douglas Coupland’s microserfs. It’s a novel about some low level Microsoft employees (microserfs) who decide to strike […]

The uncanny valley of my life.

Stray City by Chelsey Johnson

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Have you ever had a thing that’s so much yours that you’re prickly about it? A hobby that you’re into so much more than just casually that you can’t listen to other people discuss it casually? Something you feel protective of, defensive about, proprietary toward? That you can’t discuss with (almost) anyone else because they will not be on the same level as you and that’ll make you feel weird? And you feel almost angry if you hear someone else talking about like it’s theirs […]

Heavy Vinyl – not so heavy on plot but still fun!

Heavy Vinyl: Riot on the Radio by Carly Usdin, Nina Vakueva, Irene Flores

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Heavy Vinyl appears to have gone through some adjustments over its publication.  Its title was originally Hi-Fi Fight Club and then for some reason they changed the name of the record store it is set in from Vinyl Mayhem to Vinyl Destination. Both changes are better, but many of the web descriptions of the comics have the old names so that’s confusing. Anyhow, spoiler alert: it’s about a fight-club in a record store! Sort of. I haven’t read or seen Fight Club, but this seems […]

She thought that maybe, just maybe, if she was beautiful, things would get better

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

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I’d heard for years that I should watch Paris is Burning, the groundbreaking documentary about the New York’s drag ball scene in the 1980’s, but I never quite got around to it for one reason or another. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when a friend told me just how much that movie influenced Rupaul’s Drag Race, that I finally forced myself to sit down and watch it. Needless to say, it’s brilliant and unforgettable, and shame on me for not watching it sooner. […]



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