Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


None of them know I just gambled away my entire life savings for a lizard that burned half of my house down and escaped.

My Pigeon Familiar (Magical Misfits #1) by Bridget E. Baker

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This cannot be happening. Maybe it’s a bizarre dream. But even in a dream, there’s no way that I can possibly let a pigeon sleep on my bed. It’s like having a flying cockroach in my bed. Just, no. I try to shoo it away, grimacing as my fingers touch its grey and black wings. I tell myself it’s a clean pigeon. Those exist, right? Oh, no. What if it pooped on my bed? ― Bridget E. Baker, My Pigeon Familiar I thought I was […]

“You look better than me, and I’m a real woman!” “Who’s that beached whale on the floor?” “You’re so well spoken!”

Why Are You So Sensitive?: Navigating Everyday, Unintended Microaggressions by Billie Lee and Gina Torino

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cbr16bingo Disco Disco is a very loose connection but one I can make fit. You see, the category mentions gay Americans and the 1960s and 1970s. And the one thing I have learned in my reading the last few years, shows that first, this is not “ancient history” but less than 50 years ago in some areas. And the fact that we might think we’ve come a long way with equality and “political correctness” we still have a long way to go. As this book […]

“Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.”

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books recommended by friends Elizabeth Zott is a chemist struggling to be taken seriously by her male colleagues at a lab in the 1960s. She never completed her degree because her academic advisor raped her, but her lack of degree in no way means she’s not intelligent. Despite her brilliant mind, her male co-workers either treat her as nothing more than a lab assistant or steal her research and present it as their own. The one exception to this is Calvin Evans, […]

She wanted to be a Doctor but became a Lawyer and changed a few things along the way.

Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight: Patsy Takemoto Mink and the Fight for Title IX by Jen Bryant

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Did you know that Title IX was not just for athletes? It started out as not forty words that said that women had to be treated equally in all matters: education, and sports alike. Of course, that was only one thing Patsy Takemoto (later Patsy Mink) would do in her life. A young Patsy lived in Maui. She knew her family had come to this country for a better life and that meant (though she was not sure at the time) an education. At four-years-old […]

It’s Never Been Fair

The Color of Law- A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

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After reading A Promised Land and feeling upbeat, I started The Color of Law because we don’t deserve happiness in 2021. The Color of Law, subtitled A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, sets out to prove, and I think very effectively, that segregation was and is the result of government policy. More simply, the policies are de jure not de facto. It was not the actions of people or institutions acting with prejudice but instead the laws passed, from the national to […]

Trying to be better pt.1

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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So, I started writing a review of this book when I finished it in February. I’m not posting that because it feels like a decade has passed since February. I’ve been toiling over what I would do with this review. I don’t think that adding my commentary brings anything new or productive to the table. I believe that part of my role is to shut up and listen. We can’t simply be NOT racist and expect change to happen. Stand up to racism. Stand up to […]



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