Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“It’s true on a technicality. I’m being held unlawfully. I didn’t commit the crime for which I’ve been convicted. But if you look at it another way, I deserve to be here. I did a lot of other shitty things, for which I wasn’t punished.”

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

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I wish I would have known this was a retelling of The Brothers Karamazov before I purchased this book and got all excited about it. I probably never would have picked it up. There is a reason that I have never read any of Dostoyevsky’s stuff (or Tolstoy for that matter). The Family Chao follows the titular family, owners of a Chinese restaurant in a small town in America. The parents of the family are immigrants from China, and there are three sons. When the […]

A Terribly Sad Book That Probably Shouldn’t Have Been Written at This Point in Time

Spare by Prince Harry

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Honestly, where to begin with this one considering the amount of ink already spilled about it and the endless interviews. I am coming at this from the point of view of someone most interested in pre-WWI royalty, and as someone who is interested in the generational reverberations of child abuse. I am not that invested in who is right in the current generational struggle or really in any of the individuals in this book, and I tried to approach my reading with a fairly open […]

Lots and lots and lots and lots of tennis. But also maybe some murder?

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

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I asked my sister if she read this book, because we both love Liane Moriarty. Her answer was “Ugh, the tennis one?”. Yes dear readers, this is the tennis one. If there are 10,000 words in this book (it’s long, so I’m sure there are way more), 7,500 of them are related to tennis. It didn’t really bother me, but apparently it bothered my sister! It’s funny, and I know I’ve said this before, but Liane Moriarty is the only author I seem to enjoy […]

Two Memoirs of Growing Up During The Troubles

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Seamas O'Reilly

The Troubles With Us by Alix O'Neill

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These two memoirs tread a lot of the same ground (Northern Ireland during The Troubles, family drama/grief, all told humorously), but I honestly liked Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? better than The Troubles With Us simply because Séamas O’Reilly is a better writer and I really enjoy his voice. His memoir follows his family in the aftermath of his mother’s death when he’s five. His father is left with eleven children to take care of and the rest of the book is a series of […]

“You kids are different from the farm animals who have no way out. Running away in order to live is fine. Perfectly fine.”

Silver Spoon Vol. 1-15 by Hiromu Arakawa

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CBR14Bingo: Series (it’s a series) This is one of my favorite manga series and one I was re-reading again just out of a desire to read something cheerful and warm-hearted. Silver Spoon is by the same author as Fullmetal Alchemist, her much more famous work. It follows Yuugo Hachiken, who decides to go to an agricultural high school in rural Hokkaido because he hit a plateau in mainstream academia and was pushing himself so hard to succeed that he’d lost all enjoyment in life. By going […]

Sometimes when you’re trapped in a heat wave you need to read a book where the characters are even hotter

Sunset Beach by Mary Kay Andrews

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CBR14Bingo: Scandal My second Mary Kay Andrews book and another satisfying summer read. Andrews writes a fun mix of romance, family drama, and mystery, all of which combine to keep the plot moving at a fast pace. I noticed that a lot of the chapters were three pages long, which also added to the zippy feel of the book. This was an ideal book to consume during a historic heatwave, as I kept telling myself that at least I wasn’t as hot as the main […]



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