Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“But Ma used to say, not everyone circles the same sun. I never knew what she meant by that until Monday went missing.”

Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson

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Someone here already reviewed this and I’m kind of sad to submit another repeat review. BUT I read it and I gotta count it! “This is the story of how my best friend disappeared. How nobody noticed she was gone except me. And how nobody cared until they found her . . . one year later.” That’s actually a pretty good summary of this book, supplied by the main character, 14-year-old Claudia.  She and Monday have been thick as thieves most of their lives, other than summers that […]

A Lot Less Special Than I Wanted it to Be

Murder at Ford's Theatre by Margaret Truman

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Last year I went to Washington, DC for the first time as an adult, and I loved it. I’m not a huge fan of most cities, but I AM a huge fan of American history so I had a great time. When my mother-in-law loaned me this book, I was excited to read a mystery that took place in one of my favorite cities, written by the daughter of a president (actually I just read on Wikipedia that these were ghostwritten). What a disappointment this […]

A well-intentioned mess

Love is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson

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(2.5 stars) This was a tough book to read and will be a tough review to write. Love is the Drug is a very ambitious book that plots contemporary social issues and a story of developing one’s identity and independence against the background of a bioterrorist pandemic. Ultimately, I think Johnson just had too many ideas here and as a result several threads were underdeveloped and/or incoherent. Emily Bird, who goes by Bird, is from an affluent black family in Washington DC. Her parents are […]

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

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This is the second of my (at least!) ten African authors in this year’s Cannonball.  I picked this up based mostly on the title and the fact that I hadn’t read anything by an Ethiopian author yet.  But this book is not about Ethiopia, really–it’s about being an Ethiopian in America or, more specifically, one hapless immigrant’s experience. The story is told in first person by the main character, Sepha Stephanos, who fled Ethiopia after the revolution seventeen years previously.  He met up with an […]



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