Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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You try your best, or you don’t try your best. The mountains don’t care.

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

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This year I am very excited to finally be taking part in Cannonball Bingo. Today Will Be Different is filling out the “Shelfie” square as a book from my bookshelf (one that sat on my shelf for way too long before I finally got around to reading it). I am lucky enough to have a friend who gets tickets to a Pen and Podium lecture series. She has invited me to a few literary lectures from visiting authors. So far, the lectures have all been very interesting. But what’s […]

Jumping on this 2012 bandwagon

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

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What a fun read!  Like the movie Booksmart, no sooner was I finished reading this than I began to push it onto other people- you’ll love this!  Its hilarious! A comedy of errors with heart!  It is all of those things, and this is me pushing it onto CBR readers (those of you who haven’t read it already- I realize I’m late to the party). Semple’s novel is a modern family story set in Seattle, centred around genius architect Bernadette Fox- Branch, her tech wizard […]

Quirky, adorable mystery – perfect beach read.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

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This was a book that I voted for in our book club selections because of seeing it on several “Must Read” lists. I had no preconceived ideas about the plot, just knowing that others liked it. Fifteen year-old Bee is a typical teenager with a very untypical mother. Bernadette is outspoken, opinionated and is the definition of “marches to the beat of her own drum”. In a previous life she was an acclaimed architect, with designs that were revolutionary and award-winning. Now she is bordering […]

Runaway…

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

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Wow. So this book bounced all over the place and my brain still feels fizzy because there was a lot of things going on, but boy did I love this book! I loved Bernadette, Bee, their weird dog Ice Cream, and I loved the emails and letters between two women who I would have throttled if I ever met in real life (Audrey Griffin and Soo-Lin). This book was in parts funny and sad and back to funny again. I picked this because I wanted […]

I was cruising right along for the first half, and then. . .

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CBR Bingo entry Backlog. This is gonna sound weird, but this novel lost me when it started introducing too much plot. I was loving it for the first half when we were just learning about the characters and making fun of people in Seattle (no offense, Seattle), but then things went off the rails for me, and not in a fun way. Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a story about a semi-dysfunctional family living in Seattle. Bernadette was once a celebrated Los Angeles architect who […]

This is why your children were returned to you shoeless, jacketless, covered in mud, and full of fantastic stories.

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Many of you fellow Cannonballers read this one and you folks are not ambivalent about it. It appears to be a like it or leave it situation. I gotta say, I thought it was tremendous.  This is a modern tale that pokes fun at Seattle, Microsoft, progressive schools, helicopter parents and impersonal technology that allows us to outsource our lives. Elgin, Bernadette and Bee live in an upscale Seattle  neighborhood. Elgin’s job at Microsoft affords them an affluent lifestyle  but  they live in a dilapidated former […]



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