Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

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I heard good things, great things even, about Louise Erdrich from a few book pals and ya know she also has won a Pulitzer (though not for this book) so I knew I wanted to check her out. I came upon a discounted copy of this book at my local bookstore and Bob’s your uncle I bought the book. Aside: I typed that previous sentence and immediately thought, “Where does the idiom “Bob’s your uncle” even come from?!” A Google search says it’s unclear in […]

Burn, Baby, Burn

Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich

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Once upon a time, I signed up for my first CBR. I had a lofty plan of reading all of Louise Erdrich’s books in order. Why did I feel like I needed a theme? Who knows. All I know is that I fell down on book one, and it took me until last year to get back up. My recollection was that I was reading Tales of Burning Love at the time, and my stumble was going back to the beginning of her bibliography. I […]

“Books contain everything worth knowing, except what ultimately matters.”

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

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  This is a book about books, and bodies, and babies. It is a book about the things that haunt us – the things that remain, that refuse to die, so that we have to ask ourselves what purpose they are serving. This is also a book that takes place for the most part over the course of a year that begins in November 2019 – so you know what else this is a book about. The main character of this novel is Tookie, an […]

The Bingo Palace – Louise Erdrich (1994)

The Bingo Palace by Louise Erdrich

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This is novel from Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine collection of books. Generally that means a few things. Those books will be a little haunted by the two figures Nanapush and Fleur Pillager, as this book is, but it doesn’t always mean that a book will be part of a “series” in terms of a continuing chronology. Here we find ourselves in the contemporary of the 1990s and Lipsha Morrissey, a wayward and somewhat prodigal grandson, is called back home by his grandmother. While there, he […]

An Native American novel “tender with significance”

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

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“The sun was low in the sky, casting slant regal light. As they plodded along, the golden radiance intensified until it seemed to emanate from every feature of the land. Trees, brush, snow, hills. She couldn’t stop looking. The road led past frozen sloughs that bristled with scorched reeds. Clutches of red willow burned. The fans and whips of branches glowed, alive. Winter clouds formed patterns against the fierce gray sky. Scales, looped ropes, the bones of fish. The world was tender with significance.” It […]

Massive catch up, varied quality

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

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Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid This was one I did not want to have to reduce to a catch-up post but here we are, too many books and too little time. Everyone everywhere is raving about Such a Fun Age and for a damn good reason. This is the rare book that is both quality good and can’t-put-it-down good. The story opens with Emira Tucker, part-time nanny to a wealthy family in Philadelphia, helping her employer out in a midnight emergency and taking her […]



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