Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Danger of a Simple Story – Antebellum Version

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

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This book has been on my bookshelf since December 2019 when my mom, sister, and I started doing our own version of Jolabokaflod. I’ve been meaning to read it but it took two short vacations for me to make time to actually dive into the life of George Washington Black, a young slave living on a plantation in Barbados.  Esi Edugyan’s novel is brutal and hauntingly written and totally not what I expected. The novel begins in the 1830’s where a 10-year-old George Washington Black, […]

How do you know it will be any different? Because it has to be.

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

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I had a lot of expectations going into reading Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, and Royal Blue and the good news is that it was even more delightful than I expected.  In times like these, it was wonderful to be able to immerse myself in a slightly more positive alternative universe (think Great British Bakeoff meets Madame Secretary) and truthfully, I did not want to leave. For those of you who haven’t read it or read one of the many Cannonball Read reviews of it, the […]

A Hundred Words for all the Ways a Black Boy Can Lie Awake at Night

How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

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Wow!  All I have to say is “Wow!”  Saeed Jones’ memoir is a lot of things—a coming of age story, a story of growing up gay, a story of growing up black, a story of growing up gay and black in Texas, and the story of a single mother and her son.  It’s probably about a lot more than that but as a straight white woman there are frequencies I cannot hear and they are not meant for me. This is the kind of book […]

It Is a Truth Universally Acknowledged That I Am Now Really Hungry for Samosas

Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev

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My second Jane Austen remix this year (and back to back with Jane of Austin), Sonali Dev’s Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors is a fun read that made me hungry for Indian food.  That’s because the Darcy in this novel, DJ Caine, is a talented chef who is trying to make a go of it in San Francisco, having upped and left a Michelin star restaurant in France to be closer to his sister, Emma, who is fighting brain cancer. He first encounters, Trisha Raje, […]

I’m No Hero . . . I’m More of a Last Resort

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

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“But I’m no hero. I’m more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I’m the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags” (2). There’s nothing like the feeling when you discover the first book in a series and it hits all your readerly buttons.  I was pretty sure I was going to like Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse when I read about it—searching for women Native American authors to support (in the aftermath of the Sherman Alexie scandal.)  […]

I’m a Teacher In a Movie (or “I’m a college professor in a contemporary romance”)

My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

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This was one of the books I received for Jolabokaflod this year from my sister, and it was just the type of novel that I needed to escape to last weekend—an interesting group of friends, an academic setting, and a rather silly plot involving an online dating site. Millie Morris is a professor of criminology, specializing in female serial killers, at UC-Santa Barbara; she has a tightknit but eccentric group of male friends, all academics in different departments and all single.  Reid and Ed are […]



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