Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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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