Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Some places, you never leave the same

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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Kicking off my CBR12 Bingo with The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead for the RED book cover square. A beautifully written novel about a segregated Florida reform school during the Jim Crow era. All the boys never left The Nickel Academy the same as when they arrived. The novel flashes between the present and the past through Elwood’s eyes. Each chapter gives you a lyrical moment in time. We learn about the place in pieces, flashing forward to Elwood as an adult. As soon as […]

cbr12bingo – Nostalgia! sweet, silly, stupid nostalgia

Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond & Adam Horovitz, with Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Lethem, Ada Calhoun, Luc Sante, Roy Choi, Amy Poehler, Junit Tondora, Spike Jonze, Ian Rogers, Andre Leon Talley

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“Now here’s a little story I’ve got to tell About three bad brothers you know so well It started way back in history With Ad-Rock, MCA, (and me) Mike D” Beastie Boys Book, while a delightful name, is a bit of a misnomer. This isn’t a book- it’s an EXPERIENCE. Adam “Ad-Rock” (Ad-Rock) and Michael “Mike D” Diamond  got together with friends, collaborators, fans, contemporaries, rivals, pop-culture icons, and countless others to tell the story of the Beastie Boys: who they are, where they came from, […]

Topical

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

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I love New York City. It’s why I frequently read books that are set there. I could go into all the reasons why but if you love New York City too, you probably know ’em. And if you don’t, that’s cool, it’s not for everyone. Obviously, New York City is not right now what it normally is due to the coronavirus shutdown. It’s painful for me to consider as I know the city has so much life in it. Human life yes but also the […]

“because for him to do nothing was to undermine his own dignity.”

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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This was a sad, hard book to read, full of boys not much older than my own being abused and tortured in the name of reform. It becomes even sadder when you realize Whitehead based it all on a real “school”. “We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.” Elwood Curtis, who counts Dr. Martin […]

CANNONBALL! Two years in a row!

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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  As always, I am behind on my reviews but that means that I get to pick which book I would review for my 52nd of the year (I had six choices). I chose Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys for a few reasons. First, it was probably the best of the un-reviewed books on my list, though competition was fierce. Still unwritten are Wanderers by Chuck Wendig, How Long ’til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin, and The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3) by Nnedi Okorafor, all […]

You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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My first experience with Colson Whitehead was almost two years ago when I read The Underground Railroad and was very impressed. So when I saw a new book by Whitehead, The Nickel Boys (2019), I knew I was going to read it. Once again I had help from the “Lucky Day” shelf at my library. Whitehead tells the fictional story of The Nickel Academy, based on a real reform school in Florida: the Dozier School that was open from 1900 until 2011. The story follows a teenage boy named […]



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