Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell”

Educated by Tara Westover

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CBR 16 Bingo – Dreams: Tara dreamed of an education, and then fulfilled those dreams. “Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind.” We selected this book one month last year for my book club, but I didn’t end up reading it then because I was insanely busy that month […]

We Don’t Need No Thought Control (CBR Bingo: DEBUT)

Educated by Tara Westover

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God, I was so tempted to tag this as horror. I think since most of us are voracious readers or at least striving to be, education is something that this group would value. In Tara Westover’s memoir of her childhood and subsequent awakening to its deficits, education is a four-letter-word. Her Mormon parents don’t home-school their children so much as teach them the bare minimum to get by in life, rejecting not just education, but also doctors and government intervention of most kinds. This was […]

From Survivalist to PhD

Educated by Tara Westover

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“The music ended. The girls glared at me as we left the stage – I had ruined the performance – but I could barely see them. Only one person in that room felt real to me, and that was Dad. I searched the audience and recognized him easily. He was standing in the back, the lights from the stage flickering off his square glasses. His expression was stiff, impassive, but I could see anger in it.” Educated is a memoir like I’ve never read before. Throughout […]

Education is more than just books. (But books sure help.)

Educated by Tara Westover

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I picked this up knowing the broad strokes: rural girl in highly religious community and no formal education per se claws her way into and through the education system, to eventually receive a PhD.  That’s right, broadly.  But this memoir is not just about “book learning”: it’s about learning about your family, and learning that there are many ways to have a life, learning how to trust yourself when it seems like everyone else has given up on you, and learning to nurture your own […]

My life was narrated for me by others

Educated by Tara Westover

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I had seen Educated (2018) by Tara Westover everywhere. It was on all kinds of reading lists, reviews were showing up left and right, and my friends were all reading it. I put it on hold at the library, and waited the months and months before it came available. Then, right before I was about to read it, the holds on my library card somehow reset and I was suddenly waiting six months again! Fortunately, one of my friends had a hardcover copy and loaned it to […]

Cannonball! I wasn’t prepared for this read

Educated by Tara Westover

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I’ve been hoping that I would read something amazing for my first Cannonball. I had heard so many good things about Educated that I put a hold on it in my library and was excited when I got the call last week, timed perfectly to be read over the long Thanksgiving weekend and become my fifty-second review. Educated is an incredible, thought-provoking memoir. Yet I find myself writing this review quickly not because I’m so eager to share my opinions with other readers, but because I […]



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