Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.”

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

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I was given this book as a birthday present about six years ago by my friend Lindsay and it has been languishing on my shelves ever since. Enter 2020, the Read Harder Challenge, and whatever the fuck else has been going on this year that means I’m reading more from my own shelves than anywhere else. And I’m glad I finally got around to it! This is an over 600 page literary fiction book, but it reads in the way I like my literary fiction […]

Here in the half light of the Ethiopian dawn I felt like I could say the truth

Finding Joy: A Gay Romance by Adriana Herrera

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Adriana Herrera gives layers of meaning to her title, Finding Joy. For Desta, the East African capital encompasses some of the happiest and saddest parts of his life–his first home and the place where his father died. When an unavoidable work obligation lands him there for twelve weeks, he may finally have a chance for the closure he so desperately needs. What Desta never expected was to catch a glimpse of his future as he reconnects with the beautiful country and his family’s past. Elias […]

More like cutting my heart….

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Oh hello there.  Well CBR9 was a bit of a bust for me, in that life got crazy and I read exactly one book in Nov/Dec.  ugh.  But let’s give it a go again! I’m starting off this year with a book club pick, Cutting For Stone…and yeah, it was great. After an unfortunate reading hiatus, and a crazy holiday, this was a great book to get lost in. Marion & Shiva are identical twins born to a nun in Ethiopia at the missionary hospital […]

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

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This is the second of my (at least!) ten African authors in this year’s Cannonball.  I picked this up based mostly on the title and the fact that I hadn’t read anything by an Ethiopian author yet.  But this book is not about Ethiopia, really–it’s about being an Ethiopian in America or, more specifically, one hapless immigrant’s experience. The story is told in first person by the main character, Sepha Stephanos, who fled Ethiopia after the revolution seventeen years previously.  He met up with an […]



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