Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Journey to Nowhere

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

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cbr11bingo: Travel Washington Black is a slave born on a Barbados plantation who thinks he and his surrogate mother Big Kit are going to spend their entire lives as slaves before dying and waking up in her native Dahomey. Instead, when his master’s brother arrives for a long visit, Wash’s life is irrevocably changed. That brother, Christopher Wilde, known to the world as Titch, is a scientist and an adventurer who selects Wash personally to be his attendant. That isn’t all Titch has in made. […]

Why do you build me up…just to let me down?

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

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George Washington “Wash” Black had spent all of his twelve years as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados when he and friend/protector Big Kit were suddenly summoned to the master’s house to serve at table. After the tense dinner at which the master quarreled with his brother Christopher and broke Big Kit’s nose with a plate, the main house slave tells Wash he’s to stay behind and tend Christopher in his room. Big Kit tries in vain to argue Wash’s way out of […]

I might have been ten, eleven years old–I cannot say for certain–when my first master died. No one grieved him

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Washington Black – 4/5 Stars This novel just recently was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and by all rights, it should win. It also is possibly the front runner given that a Canadian author has not won in some time…possibly since Margaret Atwood for The Blind Assassin, but I’d have to check. It’s also quite simply the best book on the list that I’ve read and while I was worried it was going to be a little whimsical or odd, it’s actually nearly perfect. It’s […]

Sid is a Jerk

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As a person of mixed race (White mother, Black father) who loves the blues, I thought that a book like Half-Blood Blues (featuring several mixed race characters and blues) would be right up my alley.  It was not.  In fact, it took me nearly a week to read the first 50 pages and I was bored to death almost the whole time.  On page 54 things finally (finally!) got interesting from a story standpoint, but I still had to contend with the writing, which never […]



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