Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Why do you build me up…just to let me down?

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

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George Washington “Wash” Black had spent all of his twelve years as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados when he and friend/protector Big Kit were suddenly summoned to the master’s house to serve at table. After the tense dinner at which the master quarreled with his brother Christopher and broke Big Kit’s nose with a plate, the main house slave tells Wash he’s to stay behind and tend Christopher in his room. Big Kit tries in vain to argue Wash’s way out of the demand, but before he goes, she gives him a large nail and tells him […]

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6/1/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:25 |

I taught you better than to open doors you can’t close

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

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Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts is yet another great example of the kind of book I would have missed had I not started reading more speculative fiction and diversifying the voices in my library. That would have been a pity, because this complex, powerful novel may very well end up at the top of my 2019 favorites list. After Earth suffered an unnamed cataclysm 300 years ago, the remnants of humanity were crowded onto the spaceship Matilda and launched toward some long-forgotten destination. Humanity being what it is, the ship ends up segregated by race and privilege, with white […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "I taught you better than to open doors you can’t close"

1/20/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:3 |

Amazing, absolutely breath taking. One of My Top 5 Reads This Year.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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Bingo Square Round 2: Underrepresented I expected that this novel would be good given faintingviolet’s review, but it completely surpassed those expectations.  I was completely blown away by this novel, and how elegantly Gyasi plotted this family epic, showing how the slave trade shaped two different countries. I have read books and novels that addressed the experiences of men and women stolen from their homes who survived the Middle Passage and were forced into the United States slavery system. I’ve read about sharecropping, prison labor, the Great Migration and Civil Rights.  I have also read novels that talked about the loss […]

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10/21/2018 's CBR10 Review No:183 |

Freedom and Chains

Chained by Lynne Kelly

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This is my Backlog book. I have been meaning to read this book for a while now. Once I started it, I realized I was rereading it. Which, I will say, fits this because I had forgotten about this gem called Chained by Lynne Kelly. To work off a debt, Hastin leaves his village in India to work as an elephant keeper for a man who wants to restart his circus. Innocent Hastin only sees a way to help his mother and ill sister, not the fact that there must be a reason for this man to need to start […]

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8/27/2018 's CBR10 Review No:322 |

Straight Forward Approach with Cutting Insights

Kindred by Octavia Butler

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After my reread, I tried to remember during which Cannonball Read I had originally discovered this novel, only to realize that I had done most of my Butler reading before I participated in CBR.  I had a short post on my now defunct blog where I mentioned it, but it’s been over ten years (!) since I read this so I had forgotten a lot of the details. Basic plot details: Dana, an African American woman living in California in 1976, starts getting called back to the past, early 19th century Maryland whenever Rufus, a white ancestor of hers, is […]

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6/4/2018 's CBR10 Review No:101 |

The things we take for granted

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

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I first learned about Octavia Butler a few years ago when searching online for innovative novels and Kindred showed up on just about every list I came across. When I went to the bookstore, I had become so enthusiastic about her that I decided to buy not only this book but also Fledgling, and then I read the latter first after a coin toss. That was probably a mistake, because I disliked it so much that I put off reading Kindred indefinitely. I’d finally put it back on my to-read list before the CBR book club vote, so the timing […]

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5/28/2018 's CBR10 Review No:28 |

The Cellar Door is an Open Throat

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

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Last week I went to a conference in southern California. I took Kindred along, hoping to have time to read a few chapters. My first day there, I sat outside on my lunch break to read. I couldn’t put Kindred down (except, I had to in order to get back to the conference). I finished it before I came home. I read most of it sitting outside in a comfy chair, in beautiful weather. The contrast between my life and Dana’s at that moment felt surreal. Dana is a young woman, newly married, living in 1970s LA with her husband, […]

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5/15/2018 's CBR10 Review No:25 |

Love during the American Civil War

A Hope Divided by Alyssa Cole

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Until she was thirteen, Marlie Lynch grew up with her mother, a freed slave and wise woman. After her white father’s death, she was taken in by her half-sister and has been able to combine her knowledge of herbs and root magic with scientific principles. Three years into the American Civil War, Marlie and her half-sister are working surreptitiously to aid the cause of the Union, giving aid to runaway slaves and Freedmen, taking medicine and food to imprisoned Union soldiers, and with Marlie sending coded messages about troop movements and the Confederate Home Guard to the Resistance group the […]

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2/18/2018 's CBR10 Review No:8 |


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