Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Came For The Recipes, Stayed for the Memoir

Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora by Reem Assil

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CBR 14 Bingo: Star The author is a well-known, award-winning chef. I am on a cooking spree these days – what can I say? It relaxes me. And I especially enjoyed this cookbook, not the least because I love Middle Eastern cuisine. Arabiyaa is a mix of cookbook and memoir, telling us the stories of the recipes but also of Assil’s life and her path toward becoming a chef (hint: it’s not straightforward). The book is divided into five sections that cover all the basics of […]

I admit it: I didn’t get it. But then again, I got it like a hot stick between the eyes

Birthright by George Abraham

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I have maybe 20-25 pages to go in Birthright and cannot finish George Abraham’s poetry collection. This has only happened once before, but that was because I was having a little trouble with the concepts of that other book. That poet had tossed out a lot of current events (just when they were starting to become hot/coming back into our consciousness) and there was a lot to absorb. This time it is for both similar and different reasons. This contradiction is throughout the book for […]

Egyptian Nights

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Target: G. Willow Wilson’s Cairo.  Art by M.K. Perker Profile: Modern Fantasy, Urban, Middle Eastern, Graphic Novel Cairo is, in many ways, a prototype for G. Willow Wilson’s later novel, Alif the Unseen.  They are stories of clashing cultures. Both the complex internal clash between Islamic hardliners and the culturally diverse youth of the Middle East, and the more external, if no less complex conflict between encroaching western culture and the entrenched lifestyles of Muslims.  By necessity, Cairo is more spare, crashing through a much […]



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