Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.”

Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

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Cbr18bingo Repair: novel deals with drug addiction and rehab, broken individuals and a broken community I had a hard time choosing which bingo square to use for this one, so many could apply. Left — because so many characters and their community have been left behind. Refuge — characters take refuge in drug use to deal with physical and other pains. Or —main character ultimately has to make a major either/or decision about his life. Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize winning re-imagination of Dickens’ […]

I was a little lost but it was a fun ride all the same

Adversary to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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Cbr18bingo And (4th book in the Villain series) Bingo #1 Adversary to the Villain is the fourth book in Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Villain series, with a fifth and final volume to follow next year. I read the first three volumes last summer and liked them very much. I had intended to do a re-read before jumping into book 4 but I never got around to it and I have some regrets about that. Perhaps if I had reread at least volume three I would have […]

Love in the time of COVID

Romantic Comedy: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

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Cbr18bingo Joker Sally Milz is a writer for The Night Owls, aka TNO, a late night sketch comedy show à la SNL. She is divorced, in her 30s, and has been writing for the show for several years, a dream come true for her. When internationally renowned singer/songwriter Noah Brewster hosts the show, some of Sally’s deeply held opinions about fame, dating and romance — informed by her own not so great experiences — are called into question. For Sally, this is a deeply unsettling […]

Part Little House, Part Russian Tale

The Snow Child: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey

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Cbr18bingo craft (a husband and wife craft a child out of snow) The Snow Child is an engaging novel that combines life on a harsh frontier with a fanciful, magical fairy tale. Both can be quite grim and yet it is not a foregone conclusion that harsh reality will ever prevail. Withstanding the storms requires personal strength and the willingness to reach out to others and form bonds. A certain amount of risk is involved, which can be both terrifying and exhilarating. Eowyn Ivey sets […]

“We are rootless …we are landless. And worse than that, we are at the beck and call of the enemy.”

Land: A Novel by Maggie O’Farrell

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Cbr18bingo Map I am a great admirer of Maggie O’Farrell’s novels, but she is the literary personification of “You guys wanna see a dead body?”. O’Farrell does not hesitate to get into the ugly, nitty gritty of life: complex family dynamics, betrayal, grief, sorrow, and violence. She also is comfortable in a variety of time periods: Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan England, 20th century England, and in Land, 19th century Ireland. Yes, this time O’Farrell brings the reader to the Great Famine and its aftermath. That piece […]

Regret

When the Cranes Fly South: A Novel by Lisa Ridzen

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Cbr18bingo Season This book hits hard right in the gut. If you have experience with a loved one who suffers from dementia and/or is near the end of life, much of what is here will be achingly familiar. Lisa Ridzen was inspired to write this novel after seeing her grandfather’s caretakers’ notes after his death. When the Cranes Fly South is set up as a series of such caretaker entries followed by the main character’s reflections on his life. Main character Bo is an elderly […]



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