Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

A story of growing up with oppression that’s equal parts hilarious and heartwarming

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

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CBR18 BINGO: Or, because it gave me a much clearer perspective on South African during the apartheid “Run for cover. Run and hide. I knew that as a five-year-old. Had I lived a different life, getting thrown out of a speeding minibus might have fazed me. I’d have stood there like an idiot, going, ‘What’s happening Mom? Why are my legs so sore?’ But there was none of that. Mom said ‘run,’ and I ran. Like the gazelle runs from the lion, I ran.” This […]

The Story Will Be Told

Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490 by Edwidge Danticat

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CBR18 Bingo: Steal – This book tells the story of the arrival of the first conquistadors in the New World, and the start of their wanton rampaging and theft of land and gold from the people who already live there. Anacaona, the niece of one of the five chiefs of Hispaniola, is busy preparing to one day succeed her uncle and considering marriage with another chief. But when she begins to get strange premonitions of danger, and strange white men appear on their shores, she […]

Good Thing Climate Change is a Hoax, Right? Right?

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

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cbr18bingo Refuge I kept seeing this title and I was intrigued.  Is this some sort of seacoast bodice ripper?  Well, no, actually.  But why yes it was great, and all bodices remained intact. The setting is based off of an actual place, Macquarie Island, located about half way between Tasmania and Antarctica.  It is the location of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, with a treasure chest of seeds collected world-wide for . . . just in case.  It’s only inhabited by a scientific team, and […]

Solid Thriller

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

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Bingo: Justice I saw the movie Mystic River, based on Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name, years ago. I remember thinking it was very good. I forgot most of the plot, so I picked the book up. The story features Jimmy, an ex-con. When he was young, his friends Sean and Danny were playing when a car pulls up to them. The men inside kidnap Danny and he escapes four days later, having been sexually abused. The book then jumps 25 years in the […]

How to lose my interest in this series

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

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CBR18 BINGO: One, because it’s first in a series. Also, it’s the only one of the series I plan to read. In 1965, teenager Frances Adams visits a fortune teller who makes an ominous prediction about Frances being murdered. The prediction includes the typical 1-800-PSYCHIC ambiguity that can easily be self-fulfilling, like the dangers of “holding a queen in the palm of one hand,” or the suggestion that a “bird” will betray her. Frances spends the next 60 years in an extreme state of paranoia, […]

Get Off My Island!

Eden Undone by Abbott Kahler

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CBR18 Bingo: Sheep – The doctor and Dore, and later the Wittmers, all come to Floreana hoping to live simpler, more rustic lives, growing their own food and tending to their own animals. When Friedrich, a German doctor, and his former patient and lover Dore decide to move to an uninhabited Galapagos island in search of a pastoral setting for their self-improvement, they did not know the publicity and violence that would follow. I had a vague recollection of this bizarre story from hearing about […]



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