Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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terrific writing about terrible things

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

May 31, 2020 by andtheIToldYouSos Leave a Comment

Trigger Warning: please read the tags before deciding to read this review and/or book. If you feel that you can read this book, then you must. If you feel that you cannot, I will pass no judgement. Perhaps you have heard of the drama surrounding this release. American Dirt was climbing the charts and dominating the controversy  conversation when My Dark Vanessa tip-toed in and threw a hat into the ring. There was an implication of plagiarism from a woman who wrote a memoir about being groomed and […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: #metoo, abuse, boarding school, child abuse, debut novel, grooming, guilt, imbalance of power, Kate Elizabeth Russell, Lolita, nabokov, Pale Fire, poetry, Power, responsibility, scandal, Sexual Assault, trauma

andtheIToldYouSos's CBR12 Review No:54 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: #metoo, abuse, boarding school, child abuse, debut novel, grooming, guilt, imbalance of power, Kate Elizabeth Russell, Lolita, nabokov, Pale Fire, poetry, Power, responsibility, scandal, Sexual Assault, trauma ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

“Conflicted” would have been a more accurate title

December 23, 2018 by Dusty Highway 2 Comments

Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, is difficult to digest. She’s the youngest of seven children in a fundamentalist Mormon family in rural Idaho. Her father rules with the proverbial iron fist. He’s a survivalist, a millennialist, a conspiracy-theorist. He keeps his children out of school, refuses them medical care, continually places them in physical danger. Her mother resists in small ways but ultimately caves whenever the father demands her submission. One of her brothers educates himself well enough to get into BYU and encourages Tara to […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir Tagged With: #CBR10, #memoir, child abuse, Educated, Education, fundamentalist, misogyny, Mormonism, Religion, Tara Westover

Dusty Highway's CBR10 Review No:68 · Genres: Biography/Memoir · Tags: #CBR10, #memoir, child abuse, Educated, Education, fundamentalist, misogyny, Mormonism, Religion, Tara Westover ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

So much talk of faeries, and none of it good

April 19, 2018 by Dusty Highway Leave a Comment

I love physical books. Aside from not being able to read e-books for any sustained period of time, I love the look and feel of physical books and wish every room in my home were lined with shelves that I could fill with a never-ending stream of new books. Hannah Kent’s The Good People is one of the most gorgeous physical books I’ve ever seen, with the murky underwater blues and teals overlaid with a metallic copper leaf that partially obscures the title and amplifies […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: #CannonballRead10, child abuse, faeries, Fiction, folk traditions, Hannah Kent, Religion, The Good People

Dusty Highway's CBR10 Review No:20 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: #CannonballRead10, child abuse, faeries, Fiction, folk traditions, Hannah Kent, Religion, The Good People ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

I’m so late to this great party, I almost want to punch something.

April 25, 2016 by borisanne 4 Comments

Let the making fun of me begin: I am newly and totally obsessed with Stephen King. Brief backstory: when I was 7 or 8 years old, I started reading “Cujo.” It gave me nightmares: long, scary, repeated nightmares. I never finished it, because No More Stephen King For Me, said my parents. And then, somehow, in my mind, the idea of Stephen King’s writing… well, I guess it morphed from “OMG, that guy is scary” to “Meh, airport reading. Basically the James Patterson of horror.” […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: CBR8, child abuse, childhood, Clowns, evil, horror, King, magic, Pennywise, Stephen King, The 80s, Turtle

borisanne's CBR8 Review No:14 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: CBR8, child abuse, childhood, Clowns, evil, horror, King, magic, Pennywise, Stephen King, The 80s, Turtle ·
Rating:
· 4 Comments
Unsinkable: A Memoir by Silken Laumann cover

Unsinkable doesn’t quite stay afloat

December 30, 2015 by Loopyker Leave a Comment

Many Canadians like myself remember Silken Laumann’s amazing perseverance after a severe leg injury, to win a bronze medal only 10 weeks later at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Even without the gold, she was one of the hero stories of the game, and certainly an important one for Canada. One day, I happened across an interview to hear her talking about her memoir, Unsinkable. She sounded quite passionate and open about her life, so I looked forward to reading it. After a long wait […]

Filed Under: Non-Fiction Tagged With: #memoir, Canadian, child abuse, Depression, loopyker, Mental Health, Silken Laumann

Loopyker's CBR7 Review No:7 · Genres: Non-Fiction · Tags: #memoir, Canadian, child abuse, Depression, loopyker, Mental Health, Silken Laumann ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

I reject your heroine and substitute my own

December 10, 2015 by Zirza 1 Comment

Karin Slaughter is one of the very few thriller writers whose work I actually look forward to and buy on, or near, (or occasionally before, as bookstores here seem a little befuddled about embargo dates and English-language books) the official publishing date. I wasn’t a big fan of her last one, Pretty Girls, but the one before that, Cop Town, was a pretty damn good exploration of what it was like to be a woman on the police force in 1970s Atlanta. I heartily recommend […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Suspense Tagged With: child abuse, Grant County Series, Karin Slaughter, trauma

Zirza's CBR7 Review No:27 · Genres: Fiction, Suspense · Tags: child abuse, Grant County Series, Karin Slaughter, trauma ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment
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