Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

A physically exhilarating and exhausting experience

My Brilliant Friend: The Graphic Novel  by Chiara Lagani, Mara Cerri, Ann Goldstein, Elena Ferrante

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My Brilliant Friend: The Graphic Novel  by Chiara Lagani (Adapter), Mara Cerri (Illustrator), Ann Goldstein (Translator), Elena Ferrante (Original author) Every so often I find a book, movie, song, or some form of entertainment that I both love and hate equally at the same time.  All I’m going to say about My Brilliant Friend: The Graphic Novel the story is that it is a personal read that you love or not. I wonder how much it differs from the novel(s) and if more is told […]

Ferrante Never Misses

The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

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…I state, after only reading two of her novels and two of her shorter pieces…but at this rate, I am all-in on Elena Ferrante and I am STILL mad at myself for taking this long to catch on. I’m two books deep in the Neapolitan Novels, but I had to interrupt my trajectory for two reasons: I needed to read this story before seeing the new (read: 2021) film adaptation I need to see the film in order to solidify all of my (mostly negative) […]

cbr12bingo – Fresh Start

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

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I have a confession to make: I judged this book by its cover. I remember the frenzy of press around this book, the series, and the *mysterious* author. I also remember seeing the cover and being completely uninterested. It is, in my opinion, a dreadful cover. It looks like it was cobbled together to act as a prop. It looks like a poorly thought out passion project. I still think the cover is awful, but I am glad that I changed my mind around shunning […]

“He breathed in my face the coffee he’d just drunk, mingled with the odor of his gums.”

A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

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1970s Naples: a thirteen year old girl of privilege is suddenly removed from her seaside home and returned to a cramped and dirty apartment outside the city.  The key word here is “returned”; our heroine has been sent “home” to a place that she never knew. She spent her entire life living with her glamorous mother and policeman father, only to have that reality shattered in one afternoon when the man she knew as her father bundles her and all of her belongings into the […]

“Her quickness of mind was like a hiss, a dart, a lethal bite.” (CBR11 Bingo)

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (Translator)

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Friends, I really tried with this one. This story should work for me. Check out this Goodreads summary: “The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise […]



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