Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A Novel About Grief, Writing, and Love.

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

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This was a buddy read with my husband, which was such a fun experience. Narrated in first person by Casey, it recounts a few months of her time in Massachusetts in the 90s as she copes with the recent death of her mother and a break-up while struggling to make ends meet as an aspiring novelist. During this time she also develops relationships with two very different men—also writers. This is a quiet, internally focused novel. Casey is deeply grieving her mother’s death and often […]

The Other Side of Huckleberry Finn

James by Percival Everett

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CBR16 Bingo: Fanfic – This book is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which centers the viewpoint of the runaway slave Jim who accompanied Huck on his travels on the Mississippi. Jim is well-known as Huckleberry Finn’s runaway slave companion, but in this retelling we meet him as James, a character for who the stakes are higher and the world much more vicious than we ever glimpse in Mark Twain’s classic novel. It’s been a long while since I last read […]

Some really beautiful moments don’t necessarily add up to a masterpiece of a novel

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

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CBR16 BINGO: Détente, because Billy is always trying to keep the peace Amor Towles is an undeniably talented writer. Having fallen in love with A Gentleman in Moscow and being charmed by Table for Two, I came to expect that I would adore just about anything he wrote. And certainly, there is a lot to like in The Lincoln Highway. At times I would be cruising along like the old Studebaker in the story when a particular turn of phrase or small vignette would stop me […]

“Who cared about sex, really? When what you needed was someone to talk to in the dark.” CBR BINGO – Smash (Cannonball!)

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

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“There is a desperation to a novel that is unsettling. The world so painstakingly re-created in miniature; this tiny diorama made of words. Why go to all this trouble, to create me, to seduce you, to enumerate so many different breakfast cereals? To make the cunning tiny apartment, the itsy-bitsy Jinx? It’s like going to meet your new boyfriend’s family for the first time and discovering they are all paid actors. It’s almost easier to believe I’m real than to understand what’s actually going on. […]

*Such* a weird book, but I could not look away from it.

Identitti by Mithu Sanyal

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 24/30 A German professor who has been passing as Indian for her entire adult life is found to have been born white, and because she has placed herself in the public eye and has become a pop culture figure/icon, controversy explodes. (The author was inspired by the cases of people like Rachel Dolezal—who gets a couple mentions in the book—to write a story engaging with a fictional and heightened version of that story.) We see through the […]

First Lie Wins: the spy thriller that wasn’t

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

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mood music: Secrets – the weeknd Yet again, I find myself in the minority opinion after my latest “read.” I chose to listen to the audiobook version of this title while nursing a cold, and while the first third of the story was intriguing and well-paced, the latter two-thirds fell apart for me in a way that I had to read a summary to understand what happened at the end. To me, it felt like there were a lot of plot points that were left […]



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