Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Believe the hype

James: A Novel by Percival Everett

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Cbr17bingo TBR (2 bingos) James won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. For some people, “literary fiction,” especially the prize-winning kind, can be intimidating and/or off-putting, but this novel is engaging, exciting and horrifying from page one. James is Percival Everett’s imaging of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck on his adventure down the Mississippi River, gets separated from him, and is reunited with him again near the end. Everett imagines […]

An appalling, vital read

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

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CBR 17 BINGO: Citizen. While Mennonite women theoretically have the same citizenship rights as anyone else in their country, this isn’t the reality for the women of Molotschna. Women Talking, adapted for film in 2022, is a fictionalized response to very real and appalling incidents that occurred in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009. During that period, more than 100 women in a remote Mennonite colony woke up to signs that they had been raped during the night. Their claims were dismissed by the colony elders: […]

Sometimes a “Hallmark Movie” type of book is just what you need

The Collected Regrets of Clover: A Novel by Mikki Brammer

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Cbr17bingo Rec’d (2 bingos) This book was a staff pick/rec at my local bookstore The Collected Regrets of Clover is a novel about death and grief and about friendship and love. Main character Clover is a 30-something living in New York. She has had a unique connection to death since she was a child, but as an adult she is now struggling with loneliness and grief. A new job and a series of events could potentially take Clover in a direction she has long desired, […]

If you like your coffee with extra saccharine

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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CBR 17 BINGO: Work, because the stories take place in the coffee shop where Kei, Nagare, and Kazu all work Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a collection of four short stories loosely combined into a novel. The characters overlap from story to story, and some incidents in earlier stories come into play later in the book, but for the most part, each chapter stands alone. The Funiculi Funicular, run by husband and wife team Nagare and Kei, appears to be an ordinary cafe, but […]

“That’s just what translation is…. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases…”

Babel or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution (A Novel) by R.F. Kuang

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Cbr17bingo Black Imagine a world in which a kind of magic exists that is only accessible to those skilled in foreign language, those who are so fluent they dream in those languages. In Babel, RF Kuang immerses the reader in a world that, despite the presence of “magic,” is strangely and sadly familiar. This is a novel about imperialism and racism, but it’s also about friendship and bravery in the face of odds stacked against you. It is a long novel (over 500 pages) but […]

This book is like reading an entertaining action movie

The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold by Ally Carter

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4.5 stars Thank you to Avon and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Official plot summary: Ten years ago, they joined the CIA. Six years ago, he left the game. Five years ago, they fell in love. One year ago, she ran out into the cold with absolutely no intention of ever coming back. And two minutes ago, they woke up, bloody and bruised and handcuffed together in the dark. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know how they got […]



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