Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Art Is Power

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

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I’m not sure I can discuss this book coherently. I’ve started and stopped and rewritten this review so many times I’m starting to feel dizzy. How do I convey the perfect writing, the depth of emotion, the complex characters, the history and meaning and joy and sorrow Grace D. Li has managed? In a freaking heist novel??!? The audacity! Let’s start with the basic plot: steal back the five bronze zodiac animal heads that were looted after the burning of Beijing’s Old Summer Palace and are […]

Games Help Us Understand Life

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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Bingo square – Font – Hella cool font Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow reminded me a ton of one of my favorite TV shows, Halt and Catch Fire. It examines human relationships and heartbreak and how we use games to cope with and process our lives. I completely fell in love with both the main characters Sam and Sadie and didn’t get that sometimes itchy feeling I get when the perspective changes and I wish I was with a different character. Zevin digs really deeply […]

Truly Madly Deeply OR Women Figuring Their Shit Out

How to Fall Out of Love Madly by Jana Casale

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Bingo square – HEART – about love Love is never easy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is bullshitting you. Even good love, love that lasts, takes work. The same can be said for friendship. And your career. And just being alive generally right now. It is all hard. How to Fall of Love Madly by Jana Casale drops you right into the middle of the lives of three women that are working their shit out. It can be painful to watch. Like a car crash […]

“…wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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Cbr13bingo Travel This short, internationally acclaimed novel reads like a parable. The Alchemist is the story of a young man, simply known as “the boy”, in his quest to find his treasure. Similar to other literary quests or odysseys, the young man will encounter those who help him as well as obstacles along the way, but it is the internal journey he takes, the things he learns, that matter most. The Alchemist is a very spiritual book that emphasizes the connectedness of all things and […]

“Stretched on the loom was the huge white cloth of the North. We were the threads.”

Mrs. Mike: A Novel by Benedict and Nancy Freedman

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Cbr13bingo The Wilds, Bingo #3 (four corners and center) Mrs. Mike is a novel based on the true story of Katherine Mary Flannigan, a Boston girl who moved to Canada’s Northwest Territory for health reasons in 1907 and then made a life there. The novel was first published in 1947 and still appears on high school reading lists. I remember the copy we had on our bookshelves when I was a kid, and I remember reading and loving this story when I was about 12 […]

Plural Marriage Made Interesting

The Wives by Tarryn Fisher

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Before I get into this review, I think it’s important that I tell you I was born and raised in Mormonism and spent a great deal of time in Utah. So the polygamy of it all is extra interesting to me. That’s right. The title of this novel refers to “plural marriage,” which is what fundamentalist Mormons call (and called) polygamy from the 19th century to today. Thursday is the second wife of a man who is married to three women. His first wife, Monday […]



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