Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

We are women without a voice…We are women out of time and place, without even the language of the country we reside in.

Women Talking by Miriam Toew

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CBR15PASSPORT (Stamp #3: Books from different countries. Set in Bolivia about a Mennonite community written by a Canadian.) This book is a lot. Whatever triggers you have will be triggered. Toew’s novel is based on a real-life series of sexual assaults that occurred at a Mennonite colony in Bolivia in 2005. The victims ranged in age from 3 to 65 and the assailants were their friends and family members. Drugged with animal tranquilizers, the women would wake bloodied and bruised with no recollection of what had taken […]

Because when women understand chemistry, they begin to understand how things work.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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CBR15PASSPORT (Stamp #2: Books recommended by friends. Friends, grocery store clerks, Cannonballers, everyone who has ever read it….) Everyone on the planet has probably read this book already. Many of you reviewed it. It took me forever to actually get to it myself. And I have reasons. So, this will mostly be a review (Can I call it a review? I’m going to call it a review.) about why it took me so long to read a book that hit pretty much all of my buttons. A […]

We Should Have Seen It Coming

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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I am a mood reader prone to slumps and I also rely on my public library (and four additional in-state systems who have reciprocal relationships with my county – libraries are a miracle and you should support yours more) so I don’t always get to read the hot new book when it is hot and new. I know this was the big book around here last year, I read the stats post. So I doubt I’m adding anything new to the conversation here when I […]

Pride, Prejudice and Social Justice

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

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During my high school years, I was introduced to Jane Austen and the Brontes but for some reason never Elizabeth Gaskell. She was a contemporary of the Brontes, friend to and biographer of Charlotte, and in her novel North and South she channels both the dark undercurrents of the Brontes and the romance of Austen. Over the years, on social media, I’ve seen references to “ThorntonThursdays” with pictures and video clips but I only recently discovered that they came from the 2004 BBC series North […]

A lot to unpack in this short, supernatural mystery

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

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There is nothing in this book that I relate to. I am not a 16-year old, gay, black, male. And I definitely don’t see ghosts or ghouls. But Jake is and does. And as extraordinary as he is, he still deals with all the other ordinary things a teenager deals with. So Jake’s life is…complicated…to say the least. Jake’s ordinary life concerns living in the shadow of his big brother, growing apart from friends, and getting to know the cute new student at his school […]

“All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.”

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

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It’s a novel about unbearable loss and terrible grief that feels deeply, vibrantly alive. The language is spare, yet lush, because to describe the world rightly can only be lavish, even when the words are simple. A monkey’s paws are described as “black and shiny, like boot leather, with nails like apple pips.” A feverish child’s face is covered with a “sheen of sweat making it glimmer like glass.” A woman in labor sees her child being born, “turning, twisting, slick, like a water creature, […]



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