Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Timeless or timely? I have so many thoughts about racism, sexism, and white privilege

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

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CBR18 BINGO: Justice, because an accused Indian man faces British justice Pursuant to this review title, I was impressed and a little surprised that E.M. Forster had so much to say about race and gender, having been born in England in the late Victorian era. Considered by some to be his masterpiece, A Passage to India is a captivating and complicated study of British-India relations during the British Raj. It also touches on attitudes toward gender, though some readers have criticized that Forster falls short […]

Tackling a Classic

Oedipus the King by Sophocles

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Usually, the Read Harder Challenge tasks are broad, and it’s up to you to decide how you want to fulfill them. But every so often they come up with a very narrow one that leaves me annoyed. This year, that task is #8 – a classic from the Zero to Well Read podcast (which is fair enough; they are attempting to promote their podcast to potential listeners). However, it didn’t give us a lot of choices. Some I had read (The Great Gatsby, Their Eyes Were […]

“It is a fact that it takes experience before one can realize what is a catastrophe and what is not. Children have little faculty of distinguishing between disaster and the ordinary course of their lives.”

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

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CBR18 Bingo: Summer – The book is set in the heat of Jamaica and the Caribbean Sea, where there is an endless summer. After a hurricane wrecks their home, the Bas-Thornton children and their neighbors, the Fernandez children, are sent off on a ship to England. When they are intercepted by pirates, their lives take an abrupt turn – but whether it is the children or the pirates who will cause the most harm remains to be seen. The cover image for the edition of A […]

A lesser-known story by Goodnight Moon author

The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds by Margaret Wise Brown and Ofra Amit

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In 1948, a year after she rewilded the landscape of literature with Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown watched the love of her life fade to black. Michael Strange, born Blanche Oelrichs, had cast an instant spell on Margaret–outspoken, sophisticated, and self-possessed . . . Both women were born in the wrong century, bent on bending it to their will; both were accidental radicals, just by living unselfconsciously . . . Margaret loved Michael with unassailable devotion, and Michael was dying. So she did the hardest […]

Graphic Novel adaption of a favorite children’s classic

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If you haven’t read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt – go do it! It’s a classic of children’s literature, and one of those elevated children’s texts that reads well as an adult – but also it’s short and sweet, which busy adults can appreciate. Not to mention the story is about life and death, and how much life is too much life, and why death is sad but necessary. Evergreen topics, if you will. Tuck Everlasting is about Winnie, a ten-year-old member of a rather […]

A graphic novel to introduce classic novels

The Night Librarian by Christopher Lincoln

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The New York Public Library has a secret. After hours, a group of librarians called The Night Librarians make sure book characters stay put in their books. You see, the older a book is, the more bored its characters are of reliving the same old story day after day. So the Night Librarians make sure Peter Pan flies back to Neverland and Scrooge stays put in Olde England, and most alarmingly, that Captain Hook, the ghosts, and other dangerous villains don’t wreak havoc on library […]



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