Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Play ball, swim, tennis, hockey and more safely and comfortably

This Skirt Won't Work!: How Women Athletes Changed Their Clothes and Changed the Game by Jennifer Cooper

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History has many layers. Dresses can have many layers.  But whereas history plays out, it is hard to play most sports or ride a bicycle in dresses. Especially the outfits that many women athletes would wear before some enterprising women decided to change things up. This Skirt Won’t Work!: How Women Athletes Changed Their Clothes and Changed the Game by Jennifer Cooper and illustrator Eva Byrne follows how tennis went from a long skirt to a 1920s fashion statement. How women hockey players would change […]

You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you, dear?

19A by Toyourdetriment

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Cbr16 Bingo: Part 2 19A by Toyourdetriment “Emotional availability is a skill. You, particularly you, can decide to learn it, if you want to.” In spite of the tone, it hits like a backhand to the jaw. He has learned bedside manner for a given definition of empathy. Allowed methodical and unsparing trauma therapists to rake him over the hot coals of his childhood for a decade. He is, in short, an entire and convincing machine of a person, whose inner child definitely wants to […]

My body was built to wage war.

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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“Just smile and nod,” Gwen says. “How hard is that?” “Very,” I say. “I hate half these people. I hate half of all people” ― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carrie Soto Is Back CBR16 Bingo: Games It’s July 7th and I’m in the middle of a hot tennis summer. After finishing Carrie Soto is Back, I watched Challengers. I’m also reading a WIP fanfic that has hot people playing tennis, falling in love while playing tennis, tennis as a metaphor for failure, redemption, communication (you get […]

Celebrating

Queer Heroes: Meet 53 LGBTQ Heroes From Past and Present! by Arabelle Sicardi

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Over 50 famous and maybe not as famous people of the GLBTQ+ community are in the pages of the book Queer Heroes: Meet 53 LGBTQ Heroes From Past and Present!  While I did not count, I would guess at least half or more of the people mentioned are not mainstream (but known in certain circles) or might be the first time the reader (and most) have heard of/about them. Of course there were several more well known (Freddie Mercury, Ellen DeGeneres, David Bowie (who never […]

Tennis, Anyone?

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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I played a lot of sports in middle school and high school and somehow, I had never touched a tennis racket until about two years ago.  I promptly put that racket back after that first outing, because I was absolutely terrible.  I have read a lot of TJR’s books and really loved The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, I like Daisy Jones and the Six, and I enjoyed the rest of her oeuvre enough to read them on the beach. So it shouldn’t have been […]

Both influential and overlooked

Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis by Tom Humberstone

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CBR15Passport Own While I was on a short vacation, I finished a fictional novel of a little-known black dancer of the 1840s, William Henry Lane, or Master Juba. And I guess I was in the mood for stories of real, but not necessarily extremely famous people, because then I started Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis. Which is a memoir of Suzanne Lenglen, a French female tennis player. She was known, at the time worldwide, but she was not necessarily known for her tennis […]



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