Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Choose Your Own Adventure for the younger crowd

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Ghost on the Mountain (Dragonlarks) by Kyandreia Jones

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I don’t know about you, but I used to enjoy the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid/pre-teen. They were easy and even back then I liked that quick read. That mystery of where your choice would take you. Now they were not my main genre for reading and I moved onto other books, but I always held a small space in my heart for them. And as a bookseller I found them again, but again, I don’t need to read. But I found […]

Soldier For Fortune

Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler and the Making and Breaking of the American Empire by Jonathan M. Katz

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An excellent read and an infuriating read. Worth all five stars. And like Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction and Ackerman’s Reign of Terror, you’re guaranteed to be peeved on every page. I knew the United States had a colonizing history dating back, well really to its foundation through the US-Mexican War of the 1840s, but more specifically from the end of the 19th century onwards. I knew that we captured many islands in the Caribbean and Pacific respectively, even if I didn’t know the hows-and-whys. Jonathan M. Katz does […]

Do the Hustle

Charming as a Verb by Ben Philippe

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When I started this book I wasn’t sure how long I would continue reading. A teenage guy with a lot of swagger talking about “the hustle” and “the hunger” for making it – not really what I’m into. However, Ben Philippe’s charming novel and character are not what they seem on the surface – that’s the whole point of this enjoyable read. Charming as a Verb is about first-generation Haitian-American Henry Haltiwanger. He lives on the Upper West side of NYC where his dad is […]

Day Five was the most emotional part for me…not sure I will ever truly get over that one. 

Eight Days: A Story of Haiti by Edwidge Danticat

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Edwidge Danticat writes about Haiti with love and realism. With the picture book, Eight Days: A Story of Haiti they created a beautiful and sad story about a young boy trapped for over a week after the earthquake of Haiti a few years ago. However, this came out soon after the actual event, so it was timely. Now, one might have to explain the actual event, but sadly, we still have natural disasters, and this could be used to talk about them as well. Based […]

“My father was dying and I was pregnant. Both struck me as impossibly unreal.”

Brother, I'm dying by Edwidge Danticat

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Do you like to cry? Do you like to be reminded about sadness, loss and the general unfairness of the world. Then boy! Do I have the book for you. In the very first chapter we follow a daughter as she takes her dying father to the hospital, and then later in the living room at home when he gathers the family turns to his wife and asks “What would you like to happen after I am gone?” So there we are, not just in […]

Freedom is Only the Beginning

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Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones. They held me captive for thirteen days. They wanted to break me. It was not personal. I was not broken. This is what I tell myself. I know it’s a little early in the year, but I can’t see how An Untamed State […]



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