Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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Silent—and Silenced—Stories

The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri

September 15, 2025 by Tracy Leave a Comment

cbr17bingo: migrant I knew little about Iran and nothing about refugees prior to reading this memoir, which is an important, and at times distressing, book. Dina Nayeri primarily writes about her family’s flight from Iran, with the book broken into five sections that correspond to elements of this flight: Escape, Camp, Asylum, Assimilation, and Cultural Repatriation. Told from a non-linear perspective and interspersed with stories of other refugees’ lives, Nayeri depicts the arduous, often trauma-filled journey that refugees go on and the long-lasting impact of […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir Tagged With: #memoir, cbr17bingo, Dina Nayeri

Tracy's CBR17 Review No:61 · Genres: Biography/Memoir · Tags: #memoir, cbr17bingo, Dina Nayeri ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

“She writes that she will walk across the ocean to be with her lover. He sees this, not as a declaration of love, but as a statement of a single-mindedness so total that a kind of grandeur creeps into it.”

In Pursuit of Love: A Journey in the Footsteps of Obsession by Mark Bostridge

August 31, 2025 by Pooja Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: I – Re: the title. Victor Hugo was the most famous writer in the world when his daughter, Adèle, left their home in Guernsey on a years-long mad pursuit of a former lover. Centuries later, author Mark Bostridge retraces her steps and tries to understand her obsession in the prism of his own life. I have not seen acclaimed 1975 film The Story of Adele H., so this was my first real acquaintance with the strange life of Adèle Hugo, whose story was […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction Tagged With: #biography, #history, #memoir, 19th century, ARC, cbr17bingo, Mark Bostridge, mental illness, NetGalley

Pooja's CBR17 Review No:50 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction · Tags: #biography, #history, #memoir, 19th century, ARC, cbr17bingo, Mark Bostridge, mental illness, NetGalley ·
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· 0 Comments
Cover of You Wanna Be On Top, featuring a plastic doll head looking sad

“If I could be who you wanted / All the time”

You Wanna Be on Top? A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America's Next Top Model (2025) by Sarah Hartshorne

August 10, 2025 by drmllz Leave a Comment

Bingo square: Border. This memoir is about the blurriness of the border between the real and fake, mainly on what we call reality television, but also within trauma-inflected memory. The way I ate this up, as the youth who were born after Sarah Hartshorne’s stint on America’s Next Top Model (2007) would say. Of course, said youth would immediately identify the toxicity of the show (which took me well over a decade to figure out) and make a pithy 8-second TikTok call-out–although they might also […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction Tagged With: #memoir, America's Next Top Model, cbr17, cbr17bingo, drmllz, LGBTQIA, non fiction, Pop Culture, reality TV, Sarah Hartshorne

drmllz's CBR17 Review No:9 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction · Tags: #memoir, America's Next Top Model, cbr17, cbr17bingo, drmllz, LGBTQIA, non fiction, Pop Culture, reality TV, Sarah Hartshorne ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Crying in H Mart

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

July 25, 2025 by llp Leave a Comment

This memoir had been on my radar for some time, but I just wasn’t sure if I had the emotional wherewithal to read a book about losing your mother to cancer. I had been thinking about it ever since I watched Michelle Zauner’s band, Japanese Breakfast, play on Saturday Night Live (sidebar: I looked it up to see when that performance occurred, and it was in 2022. WHAT EVEN  IS TIME). However, when I had to do a very quick book shop to get something […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction Tagged With: #memoir, cbr17, cbr17bingo, Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner, non fiction

llp's CBR17 Review No:8 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction · Tags: #memoir, cbr17, cbr17bingo, Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner, non fiction ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

I, a person who does not read memoirs, enjoyed this memoir

Just Kids by Patti Smith

July 23, 2025 by Fiat.Luxury 1 Comment

I had hardly ever listened to Patti Smith’s music before picking up this book, and I hardly ever read memoirs, because I find most of them self-indulgent and boring, sorry, memoirists! But this one was recommended to me as a memoir that was “worth it” and it was available from the library. Good news: it was totally worth it! Even if you, like me, are only passingly aware of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorp’s body of work! Smith’s prose is plainspoken and authentic, which makes […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir Tagged With: #memoir, Just Kids, new york, patti smith, robert mapplethorp

Fiat.Luxury's CBR17 Review No:18 · Genres: Biography/Memoir · Tags: #memoir, Just Kids, new york, patti smith, robert mapplethorp ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment
Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

Girl in a Band: A Memoir

Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon

July 18, 2025 by llp Leave a Comment

I have to confess I have never been a particular fan of Sonic Youth. I would read about them in Sassy, but I didn’t really hear much of their music other than when the Kool Thing video played on Much Music, and I just didn’t really love it. The band had an aura of cool (New York, friends with Chloe Sevigny, etc) that felt really beyond me because I just did not get it. However, I was in a used record store this spring and […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, Featured, Non-Fiction Tagged With: #memoir, cbr17, cbr17bingo, kim gordon, non fiction, Sonic Youth

llp's CBR17 Review No:7 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, Featured, Non-Fiction · Tags: #memoir, cbr17, cbr17bingo, kim gordon, non fiction, Sonic Youth ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments
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Recent Comments

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