Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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> Tag: semi-autobiographical

slick with sweat, thick with hate-and I love it

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

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Somehow, this incredible little novella flew completely under my radar until last year. Luckily, the folks over at Lit Hub are absolutely obsessed, and I was unable to remain in the dark for much longer. When it’s in a book I don’t think it’ll hurt any more …exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them. While not entirely an “autobiography”, Duras tells the tale of a very young girl who grew up in an unstable household in French-colonized […]

Sweet story about the joys and challenges of friendship, identity, and privilege

Stargazing by Jen Wang

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Stargazing is the most recent graphic novel from Jen Wang of The Prince and the Dressmaker fame.  My 10 year old spotted Stargazing at San Diego Comic Con and we had to bring it home.  She read it in one sitting and then began insisting that I needed to read it.  The Prince and the Dressmaker blew me away so I had high expectations for Stargazing, and Wang did not disappoint.  Once again she explores themes of friendship, identity, and privilege. Christine Hong is Chinese American in a […]

Should be required reading for everyone

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Arnold “Junior” Spirit doesn’t exactly have an easy time of it. Born poor and hydrocephalic, it’s pretty much a miracle that he survived infancy. Suffering from stuttering, his over-large head, bad eyesight and frequent seizures, he’s routinely picked on by both children and adults on the Spokane reservation, finding solace in basketball, his drawing and his best friend Rowdy. When Junior transfers away from the school on the reservation to get a chance at a real education, Rowdy feels deeply betrayed, like Junior’s sold out […]

This is more about me than the book.

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In How to Build a Girl Caitlin Moran manages to write a story of teenaged angst that so closely resembles my own experiences that I though she had perhaps stolen my diary and just added a lot (like, a lot, a lot) more sex. Except I didn’t keep a diary in those days. (Now you would call it a journal, and be really precious about it). How to Build a Girl is the story of Johanna Morrigan, a working-class girl in 90s England who hates […]

How can you be a teenage misfit when your parents applaud and encourage rebellion?

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Nikolaj moves to a newly constructed house in a suburb in one of the counties surrounding Oslo in the early 1970s. His father is one of the architects who planned the area, and is full of dreams about the social opportunities the new affordable housing will mean for families in the area. As it turns out, most of the families who move in stick to a rigid routine of conformity and normality – their children wear the same thing, cut their hair the same way, […]



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