Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Not all rainbows in these celebrity memoirs

We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union

Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) by Rosie Perez

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I read We’re Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union for my last in-person Mocha Girls Read meeting in March. This memoir is a collection of moments that are mostly linear with some flashbacks. Unlike Becoming, the chapters are not as detailed about her early childhood. The book is all about keeping it real and reflecting on her past with levity. We learn about her family and how she at a young age she looked after herself. With no supervision, Gabrielle got up to some […]

The Secret to Chess is the Secret to Life

All the Wrong Moves: A Memoir About Chess, Love, and Ruining Everything by Sasha Chapin

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Learning to play chess was one of my 2020 new year’s resolutions. It turned out to be a pretty good one since we’re largely home bound. Lately, everyone is talking about Netflix’ The Queen’s Gambit, as well, so chess is enjoying a bit of spotlight it hasn’t been in for some time. However, as Sasha Chapin details in All the Wrong Moves, for a certain type of person chess is always in the spotlight. The game becomes an obsession. It’s a niche world and perfect […]

Allie’s not dead! She’s back and she gave us this wonderful book and she’s ok (sort of)

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

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Back in 2013, Allie Brosh published Hyperbole and a Half named after the blog she kept (and has finally updated with a new post!). I pre-ordered the last book and bought it as a Christmas present for pretty much every single person my husband and I knew that year (now our own copy seems to have mysteriously gone missing – which distresses me). Allie’s blog (we are clearly on first-name basis, and would be great friends if we ever met) and her book meant a lot to me, […]

“We gotta get out while we’re young, ’cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to run” (double Bingo)

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

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#CBR12 Bingo: Music   Official book description: In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began.   Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs.   He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid […]

A country without a language is a country without a soul

The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood by Hugo Hamilton

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The speckled people is a memoir of a childhood in Ireland in the 1950’s, growing up between languages. Hugo’s mother is a german emigrant and his father is an Irish nationalist determined that his children will revive the Irish language. Hugo himself is just a boy who wants to fit in with the other kids – who all speak English. The book is written in a soft language, floating in and out of the memories of a young boy. His father is a brutal tyrant […]

Be the Human Magnet you wish to see in the world

Crash Test Girl: An Unlikely Experiment in Using the Scientific Method to Answer Life's Toughest Questions by Kari Byron

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If you get to know [people] a little better and work up a degree of human warmth toward them, you can judge them without the influence and control of unseen forces. — Kindle location 1081  



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