Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Mid-April Review roundup

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

by 1 Comment

It’s time for another mega-post reviewing a bunch of books that have nothing in common with each other! Lousie Erdrich’s The Mighty Red was so achingly beautiful that when I finished it, I got genuinely worried that I would never find a book this good again. Set in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, it follows two farming families during the 2008 financial crisis. There’s a local tragedy, a love triangle, and a scandalous crime, but the centerpiece of the book is Erdrich’s prose. She […]

This book also has a character called “the cutie bandit,” which is amazing.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

by 3 Comments

When I tell you I was not interested in this book at all and then I zoomed through it in a day and a half. It was a book club pick, and I’d read and liked/loved I think three of her books before this one, but the synopsis just didn’t call to me. But, book club pick, so I reserved it from the library. This book is the epitome of what I mean when I say that writing style is the most important thing in […]

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

by Leave a Comment

This was a DNF at 30 percent. I really tried to get into this one and just gave up in the end. I heard nothing but great things about it, but I think it just jumped around too much for me to really get invested. The first couple of pages read as bizarre and I think I just got annoyed because I thought this was going to be a ghost story in a bookshop. And I don’t know. I just kept reading and reading and […]

Nights on Turtle Mountain

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

by Leave a Comment

Based on the writer’s grandfather, Thomas Wazhashk is the watchman of the title as well as a farmer and the head of the tribal council of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, located in North Dakota. The year is 1953 and the tribe is in serious trouble. Under the guise of “integrating” the tribe into American society, a Senator from Utah is pushing a bill that will terminate the reservation Thomas, his family, and his friends all live on. Thomas has been spending his night […]

A Celebration of Books and Readers

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

by 2 Comments

I am a sucker for  Louise Erdrich, and this book did not disappoint. This is a book lover’s story: the romance of words, sentences, the independent bookstore, discussions about books, book recommendations, all wrapped up in a darn good story. Tookie, the narrator begins: “While in prison, I received a dictionary. . . I had received an impossible sentence of sixty years from the lips of a judge who believed in the afterlife. So the word with its yawning c, belligerent little e‘s, with its […]

“The world was filling with ghosts. We were a haunted country in a haunted world.”

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

by Leave a Comment

This is a book I wouldn’t have picked up if not for one of my book clubs, and this is exactly why book clubs and stuff that makes you read outside your comfort zone are so fun. This book was so good! A real treat for book-lovers, and for humans who lived through (are living through?) the COVID-19 pandemic. I didn’t get excited about this one until somebody told me it was about a woman who is haunted by her least favorite bookshop customer, who […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo