Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I am the tree and you are the bird. Fly off as you please, you will always come back to sit on my branches.

A Long Way from Douala by Max Lobe

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Pa had brought out our entire stock of beer. Simon, Roger and I had the job of serving. We ran to and fro between the kitchen, the living room and the porch. Our hi-fi pumped out old Makossa hits: our parents’ favorites. A few women neighbors of their generation, also wearing kaba ngondos, had begun shimmying in the empty space at the center of the room. They looked like they were showing off: you can’t dance the Makossa without showing off.” ― Max Lobe, A […]

an author unafraid to let the chips fall where they must

Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler

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CWs, copied from the author: all the misogyny, all the homophobia, and a car accident death (offscreen, but discussed often) and also abortion/a miscarriage. I respect Dahlia Adler because while many authors have a tendency to write their romantic leads into a difficult situation (looking at you, innumerable romance novelists and also Linda Holmes), Adler has the guts to keep them there and not give them the “easy out.” In this case, the “star” quarterback of a middling-to-bad Texas football team dies in a car […]

Ooh boy. I wanted to love this so much, but it made me very angry.

When Women Were Dragons by Kelley Barnhill

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I think this is my first ever Cannonball book that I DID NOT FINISH.  I saw this book somewhere (I legit have no idea where), and it caught my eye because the main character is named Alex Green, and also duh – dragons.  My cousin who lives in Arizona who just left Pennsylvania after visiting our entire family is named Alex Green.  I was pumped when I read the plot too. Whoo boy.  I borrowed this audiobook from the library, and I was so excited […]

“Shara’s not nice. Shara’s so many more important things than nice.”

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

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4.5 stars It’s not exactly easy being Chloe Green, the bisexual girl with two mums when also trying to become valedictorian at Willowgrove Christian Academy in a small Alabama town. She keeps trying to protest against the school’s puritanical rules with frequent dress code violations, but also has to make sure she doesn’t actually end up expelled. Chloe has friends, having quickly befriended the other queer kids at Willowgrove, but she’s mostly avoided interacting too much with the rest of the student body. Everything changes […]

Turn back the clock and see how it started

History Comics: The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights by Archie Bongiovanni 

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I give History Comics: The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights by Archie Bongiovanni  a four for the story idea and showing history in this genre/format. But it loses a point due to the time traveling aspect. The fact this was a major point of GLBT+ rights mean that having 21st century people in 1969 allows the smallest thing to cause a butterfly effect and could have changed history. However, that aside the look at the struggles of Stonewall is well done with contemporary […]

sorry this review is so late…

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

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CW: homophobia galore, of course, but also familiar disappointment/lack of support on coming out (period appropriate, I suppose, but heart wrenching nonetheless) This is a hard one for me to review–it hits a bit close to home, years later and on the opposite coast. I’m so glad that it was the chosen book for AAPI month for Cannonball Read, even though I didn’t end up writing my review OR participating in time (everything lined up with when I was moving across the globe, but I […]



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