Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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When Langston Found Langston

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

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Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome is an interesting look at the late 1940s, Chicago, growing up and literature that was way too short. I would have enjoyed more of the history of the time and seen a bigger connection to the two people called Langston. Still, I enjoyed what I read but, like I said, there needed to be more: more of the history of the times (Why were the black families moving north? Why were the soldiers were coming back? Even the fact that […]

Mary Roach’s Stiff: Macabre, fascinating, and funny

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

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Reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers was a real experience. I’ve been wanting to read this book ever since I heard someone on NPR talking about it years ago, and I finally got around to it. This is one of those books that fascinated me while it repulsed me, and it made me feel like I was learning a lot while also challenging my preconceived notions about death and body donation. I especially appreciate when Roach tells anecdotes about her sense of humor not quite […]

The Midnight Library: Surprisingly uplifting

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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The Midnight Library follows a woman name Nora Seed who has a pretty sad life: dead end job, bad apartment, dead cat, no friends, dead mom. So she decides to take her own life by overdosing. After laying down to die, she finds herself in this kind of interstitial space of a weirdly magical library with infinite books of all the infinite lives she could have lived. The librarian is a woman from her past, Mrs. Elm, who helped her through her father’s death. Mrs. […]

what happens to the torch-bearers, the candle holders, the vigil keepers?

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

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There is so much that I want to tell you about this book, but I won’t. I took so many notes, and placed so many scraps of paper between pages, but I do not want to ruin a single realization for you. Rebecca Makkai has crafted an intricately woven tapestry that you have to witness in its full glory; I do not want to give you a magnifying glass before you have had a chance to first witness the enormity of the project. The Great Believers hits […]

“A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.”

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

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Last year, I fell off the CBR wagon when COVID shut down all of our libraries and I was unaccustomed to actually buying books. Then I may have forgotten to return the books I already had out and accrued a fine. So I started 2021 determined to complete a 52 book Cannonball but obliged to pay for books until I settled my library account. Without the luxury of picking ten books and being free to abandon anything that didn’t work out in the first chapter, […]

“You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”

Hogfather (Discworld #20) by Terry Pratchett

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Christmas of 2019, I received many books most of which I have not managed to read in 2020. One of the ones I did get to however was Hogfather, specifically because I wanted something Christmas adjacent in this year of not really having my usual holiday traditions and routines. I’m glad that I revisited Discworld this month, even if I couldn’t really sink into it. But that’s definitely a me problem in this adjective year, and not a problem with the book. Hogfather tells the […]



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