Cannonball Read 16

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“A queen offers her hand to be kissed; can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time.”

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

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One of the unexpected benefits of parenting my stepson is the introduction to books I wouldn’t know anything about. He’s a reluctant (but consistent) reader and I adore reading along with what he has for school, especially know that he’s at a high school level. Do we talk about the books? Absolutely not. But maybe someday he’ll take me up on the offer. (Fingers crossed). This was the summer reading book for sophomore honor’s English and neither of us started eagerly. I don’t read a […]

“Women without prospect, who lead dull earnest lives and rejoice in their petty little pseudo-pleasures, I find quite depressing and despicable.”

The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, Meredith McKinney (Translator)

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CBR16 Bingo: Vintage – Not only is this a very old book (written about a thousand years ago!), but it is also very much of its time, cataloguing minute happenings in the Empress’s court and listing out the common tastes of the time. Once there was an empress who gave her attendant a bundle of writing paper for making a witty remark. To highlight what a cultured place this court was, the attendant decided to record an amusing hodgepodge of anecdotes, poetry, and things both […]

“Maybe all I need is a purpose.”

Singing With Elephants by Margarita Engle

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11-year-old Oriol wants to go back to Cuba. Ever since her grandmother died, she’s felt lost at her Santa Barbara, CA home. School is difficult, her older sister has less time for her since she got a boyfriend, and the only place she is truly happy is helping her parents at their veterinarian clinic. This clinic is no ordinary vet: her parents are specialty vets, assisting with wild and unique animals. In a show-biz state like California, they have a lot of work. One day, […]

“Nothing makes sense until it makes sense in the body”

Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant

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National poetry month demands some poetry reviews, and fortunately there’s no shortage of good poetry to engage with. Jason Allen-Paisant won last year’s T.S. Eliot Prize for his second collection, Self-Portrait As Othello. Allen-Paisant is originally from Jamaica, but also studied in Paris and earned his PhD in medieval literature at Oxford, and his familiarity with moving through these more rarefied, majority-white spaces in Europe prompts, in part, the identification with the figure of Othello that forms the center of this collection. Self-Portrait As Othello really […]

“Dear friends I cannot rescue you”

If All the World and Love Were Young by Stephen Sexton

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I heard about this collection last summer, in a context that will sound a little insufferable, i.e. at a poetry roundtable at an Irish Studies conference where we were discussing a fairly experimental work, but bear with me: someone brought up this collection as a poetry collection that, yes, was concerned with place, as so much poetry is, but one of those places was the digital world of Super Mario Bros. Well, that got my attention. But also I was tired AF from jet lag so […]

damn whoever tries to burn you

The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace

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One of the Read Harder tasks from 2023 was to read a book of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author and another was to read a book by an author who was geographically close to you. Amanda Lovelace, author of The Princess Saves Herself in This One is both queer and lives in New Jersey so I had put her second book The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One on my to read for the year. And then 2023 just did not cooperate even […]



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