Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Richard knows he’s one of very few people in this world who are in a position to take their pick of realities.”

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Susan Bernofsky)

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Time does something to a person, because a human being isn’t a machine that can be switched on and off. The time during which a person doesn’t know how his life can become a life fills a person condemned to idleness from his head down to his toes. Go, Went, Gone is a carefully crafted, meticulously researched novel that feels as natural as walking down the street. Protagonist Richard is a newly retired professor of Classics and a childless widower. As a former East Berliner […]

No, really, it’s a comedy

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This one is a reread for me, but it’s been about a decade, so there were a few things I’d forgotten.  Not a lot, though.  I don’t know how many of you are Dean Koontz fans, but this is another one of his that is basically a normal good guy versus a supernatural evil creature.  Of course, there’s the requisite side characters and side-kicks, and, in this case, a decent portrayal of first generation American angst. One thing I definitely have to say about him […]

Life is just a bowl of (sour) cherries

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CBR10Bingo: Delicious Finding a book for this CBR10Bingo square was oddly tough for me, as nothing in my TBR list really jumped out at me as being obviously about food. When I started pulling my books off the shelf, one by one, and saw those gorgeous yellow cherries on the cover of Dina Nayeri’s Refuge, I knew this was the one.  Early in the book, Niloo’s father imparts his life’s philosophy to his young daughter.: “Life in Ardestoon is a shank of lamb so bursting […]

“Every day that year, on average, 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced, a fourfold increase in just four years.”

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When I didn’t manage to read a book I had selected for 2017’s Read Harder Challenge I left the library request in as these were books that I had put onto the list for several reasons. Following ElCicco’s detailed and extensive review of A Hope More Powerful than the Sea I knew I needed to read this book in order to bear witness to one woman’s experience as a refugee from the Syrian war as it is one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of my […]

But God,/doesn’t she wear/the world well?

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This is my first book of poetry, ever. Or rather, pamphlet, because it is so thin. I bought it because of the Beyonce hype behind Warsan’s words, because I’d heard her name over and over, because her name is now tangibly linked to words like “refugee” and “woman”, because a Pajiba friend posted an excerpt from her poem on Facebook, because they actually (actually!) had it in a Bangkok bookstore, a thin sleeve of paperback tucked amidst hundred-page hardcovers. I read it at home, and […]

Nevertheless, She Persisted

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…[R]efugees would not risk their lives on such a dangerous journey if they could thrive where they were. ~Melissa Fleming, office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Too many people in the West, particularly in the US, seem to think that refugees are moochers who want to selfishly come here to get something for nothing. We have little to no idea how refugees become refugees, and more tragically, we often just don’t give a damn. It’s not our problem, right? “If these people would […]



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