Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.”

Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

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Cbr18bingo Repair: novel deals with drug addiction and rehab, broken individuals and a broken community I had a hard time choosing which bingo square to use for this one, so many could apply. Left — because so many characters and their community have been left behind. Refuge — characters take refuge in drug use to deal with physical and other pains. Or —main character ultimately has to make a major either/or decision about his life. Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize winning re-imagination of Dickens’ […]

“A beautiful man with too much heart for the raw deal he got”

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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I noticed Caesar’s Wife’s review of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, but as I was finishing up the book myself, I held back reading the review. Now that I’ve finished this wondrous book, I can say Caesar’s Wife has it all exactly right. It’s a much better job than I can do here, having just finished the book a few minutes ago, brought to tears. Demon Copperhead is about a young boy born in the rural south, with little to his name but a mother who […]

Face your demon

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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I recently finished Demon Copperhead—or more accurately, listened to it on audiobook—and it completely captured me. At over 30 hours long, it ticked my new criteria for audiobooks: a truly epic runtime that gives me a good return on my Audible credit. I tend to listen while I’m out running or commuting, and choosing a long, immersive story like this one keeps me motivated to keep getting out and doing things. It becomes part of the rhythm of life.   Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, inspired […]

last two! an opioid double header

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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Empire of Pain: The Secret of the Sackler Dynasty This is a great (read: infuriating) book, but for someone like me who works in the pharma industry and had a first hand seat to the fall of Mallinckrodt (a similar, less culpable just because of scale player in the opioid crisis) I wasn’t as shocked as some of my friends were by the actions of Purdue through the middle of this book. Besides, things keep coming out about how terrible all of these actors are, […]

I tried to like this book. I just could not.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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I really tried with this book. I borrowed the Kindle version a few months ago and got multiple hours into it. Then I just could not continue with the never-ending trauma / bad luck / shitty situations this kid was in. I guess my bad feelings went away, because I saw my sister had the Audible version last week. I gave it another shot. I started like two hours in, because I knew I had gotten at least that far. I probably listened for another […]

“We’ve got story enough here to eff up more than one young life, but it is a project.”

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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CBR Bingo – In the Wild When I heard that Barbara Kingsolver had written a Pulitzer Prize winner I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. I was a huge fan of her 1999 Pulitzer finalist “The Poisonwood Bible” and have enjoyed a number of her other books so I knew I was going to like this book and I was right. This book is in my top five for the year. Kingsolver is a brilliant writer, creating characters that are both common and […]



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