Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Old Wives Tales Vs. Science

Expect Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong, and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster

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After much wondering if it was even possible, hubby and I are expecting. And while I’d done quite a bit of research on the process and probability of conception, I’d done virtually no research on what to do after you managed to succeed (mostly because I didn’t think we would). Days after my second positive test, I stared at the coffee pot, vaguely remembering my pregnant friends abstaining from caffeine, fish, deli meats and a hoard of other things. I stood in a first-trimester fatigue […]

Would you like a do-over of college?

Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn

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Spoiler warning! This is the fourth novel in the series Heroine Complex and this review may contain spoilers for earlier books in the series. I suspect it will also be a lot more satisfying for someone who’s read the preceding three books. Begin with Heroine Complex.    Official book description: Everything in Evie Tanaka’s life is finally perfect. As a badass superheroine, she defends San Francisco from demon invasion on the regular. Her relationships with superhero partner Aveda Jupiter, little sister Bea, and hot, half-demon husband Nate have […]

snapshot of a sculpture

Galatea by Madeline Miller

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We’ve heard his story countless times; it’s been a well-trod myth since Ancient Greece. We read Metamorphoses, we studied Pygmalion, we sung along to My Fair Lady, and we mourned the short life of (the terribly named but very good) Selfie. With Madeline Miller, Pygmalion strikes again. He strikes the marble into a statue, the statue becomes a woman, Galatea strikes out on her own, and Pygmalion strikes her down. Galatea is convalescing (read: held captive) in a hospital by the sea. She is cut off from her daughter, […]

A graphic memoir about pregnancy, but worth reading even if you don’t want to ever be pregnant.

Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley

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I always feel the same way when I finish a new Lucy Knisley book. It’s so weird to have followed her since the very beginning of her career (through a stroke of luck, I’ve followed her blog from the beginning, before she published a book, because a friend also followed her), to essentially watch her life progress without having spoken a single word to her. (This is especially true since I started following her on Instagram after her son was born. She’s been posting lots […]

I had to stop reading this at night

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This is a very short story, and it almost feels like a cheat to have it as one of my CBR books for the year, but here we are.  After reading Obscura (which was one of my recent reviews), I wanted more Joe Hart.  So I downloaded a few short stories that were available on Kindle Unlimited.  I started to read this story the other night laying in my bed, and I actually had to stop and read it during the day. It’s at its […]

A Girl Named Mister

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Nikki Grimes is a great prose-poet for young adults. Unfortunately, A Girl named Mister, did not make me think “This is my favorite book!” Had I read it when it first came out, maybe I would have enjoyed it more. I feel others have done the theme better (fourteen-year-old girl falls in love, has sex, gets pregnant). The ending is slightly unique with the reader thinking Mister will give her baby up, yet, due to conflicting emotions, will she? The fact (spoiler) the mother of […]



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