Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

We can lose everything but our hope and dignity

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

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  I appreciate the works of Isabel Allende and here her story-telling approach for showing the grand narrative of history through the story of a family across generations is brought to Trump’s 1st presidency. Like with her other books, this one weaves together the lives of 3 main characters, Samuel and his early life in Nazi Austria and then his adult life, Leticia originally from El Salvador but now living in the US, and Anita a little girl trapped in the asylum system during Trump’s […]

It’s pretty obvious from the get go that Eleanor Oliphant is far from completely fine

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

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CBR15 Bingo: Europe – The book is set in Glasgow, Scotland. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is not a book I would have chosen for myself but it was selected by my book club.  This has been a reoccurring theme since I joined.  I’m glad to be gently pushed out of my comfort zone of almost exclusively reading fantasy, sci-fi, and romance.  It is highly recommended by several Cannonballers so I was excited to start reading.  However, not long after starting I began to question […]

“There Is Never Only One, Of Anyone”

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

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Cat’s Eye is a story about friendship, family, memory, and, especially, trauma. It follows the life of Elaine from childhood through about age 50. Like The Blind Assassin, also by Margaret Atwood, this novel alternates between past and present and is primarily set in the past. Most of the novel occurs when Elaine is about age 8-10. Elaine and her parents and older brother had a nomadic lifestyle during Elaine’s early childhood. Her father is an entomologist who travels around looking at bugs. When Elaine […]

“When my life was new, I understood in my bones how little it mattered what anybody else was doing, or what they thought about what I was doing. I believed my bones then.”

Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

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In one word: Raw Cannonball Read Bingo: Elephant I’ve been toying with writing my own book for a few years now, and am finally starting to get serious about the endeavor, or at least get serious about saying I’m getting serious, which is practically the same thing, right? I cashed in a work award (thanks Snappy!) for a free six-month Skillshare membership and came upon a course by Ashley C. Ford on writing titled “Creative Personal Writing: Write the Real You.” I loved her style […]

None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

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To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close at hand and make it stand in for the whole. When I finish a project or some small, self-assigned goal, one of my rewards is gathering a pile of books from my TBR list, usually used paperbacks. For coming-of-age stories, this one had a ton of reviews and, when I spotted it at a half priced books, I snatched it up. […]

Self-Help 1, 2, 3!

The Journey from Abandonement to Healing by Susan Anderson

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD

Please Yourself by Emma Reed Turrell

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It’s time for the heavy-weight competitors of the Self-Help category! A team up of not two but three books that are written by highly regarded mental health professionals and containing a wealth of helpful and, in this combo, complimentary advice on how to get over your damn shit! Okay but seriously, the combo of these books and the order I read them in was really great, which is why I’m doing a triple review. The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Surviving and recovering from the […]



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