Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Heart Principle grabbed mine and didn’t let go

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

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Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle was everything I wanted and more. Our heroine Anna Sun is going through it. She is a violinist stuck in a loop after a performance video goes viral on YouTube. With every practice session, she wants to replicate that moment with precision. She ends up burned out and unable to finish the song. She is attempting therapy to find a breakthrough. Later that day, her boyfriend asks to “see other people” as an excuse to know that he’s ready to […]

“The ace world is not an obligation. Nobody needs to identify, nobody is trapped, nobody needs to stay forever and pledge allegiance. The words are gifts. If you know which terms to search, you know how to find others who might have something to teach.” (Bingo Blackout & Cannonball!)

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

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Books have answers, and that is one of the reasons I love them. The past few years I’ve spent some time digging into me, and how I work, and how much of what I have presented to the outside world was authentic, and how much was what I had been expected to do. I had some knowledge of aces and asexuality before reading this particularly as one of my friends is ace and has been out for at least the decade I’ve known her, probably […]

Started November 12th. Finished January 12th. The breaks in reading were NECESSARY

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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…but the journey was worth it. This book is brutal. If you are sensitive at all to suffering- be it human, animal, generational, cultural- turn away now and do not look back. Four Blackfeet men engage in a bit of last-minute less-than-legal Elk hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving. What happens that day never really leaves them, but what they left behind comes rocketing back into their lives 10 years later. The 10 years since that day have not been easy; the men are plagued by […]

“Every Time Something Doesn’t Happen, It Means Something Else Can”

What If A Fish by Anika Fajardo

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While I’m not usually a reader of middle-grade fiction, this debut novel came across my Facebook feed, as one of my cohorts from my MFA program was its editor! I bought it immediately and was so charmed by this adorable story. What if A Fish follows Little Eddie Aguado, an eleven-year-old Colombian American who feels neither Colombian or American. As he struggles to find his place in the world, he comes across a fishing medal owned by his late-father that sets him on an adventure […]

Lyrical historical coming of age fiction

Red Dove, Listen to the Wind by Sonia Antaki

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Thirteen year old Red Dove lives in interesting times for the Lakota people. Shortly after the Battle of the Greasy Grass (Battle of Little Big Horn), her people have fallen on hard times. Food has become scarce, and the Lakota have learned that they cannot trust the people who have settled on their lands to live peacefully. In a moment of weakness, Red Dove’s mother agrees to send her children to a local Catholic school, hoping that the children will at least find regular meals […]

I learned something when I didn’t expect to!

Dare to Disappoint by Özge Samanci

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I was browsing the high school graphic novel section where I substitute, looking for something to read during a prep period, when I stumbled upon this.  I had never heard of it before, but the entire section had some good stuff in it, so I picked it up. It looked cute and clever, so I started reading it.  I didn’t expect to learn things! This is a graphic memoir, taking place in the early ‘80s in Turkey.  Özge is about 10 years older than me, […]



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