Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search

Bear

Bear by Marian Engel

by Leave a Comment

Fishwives. Fishwidows. And we all set out to be mermaids. ― Marian Engel, Bear The world was furred with late spring snow. It was the soft, thick stuff that excites you unless you are driving or half dead, packing snow already falling in caterpillars off the greening branches. ― Marian Engel, Bear This is the story of a woman who sequesters herself in a remote area of Ontario, Canada, to catalog an estate bequeathed to the Canadian government. In her isolation, she finds herself, breaking […]

People who live in glass houses shouldn’t host baby showers on broiling hot days

So Thrilled For You (2025) by Holly Bourne

by Leave a Comment

Content note: Do NOT read this book or this review if you have any sort of trauma related to childbirth, motherhood, or (in)fertility. So Thrilled For You is about a group of four women who were housemates at university in England, whose bond has become somewhat strained, but who are coming together for a happy occasion–Nicki’s baby shower. Charlotte (paging SATC) is the perfectionist organising the shower to the fullest of its glossy filtered #humbleandblessed social media potential; Lauren is dealing with postpartum depression and a […]

If your therapist started writing chick-lit, this is what you’d get.

Things You Save In A Fire by Katherine Center

by Leave a Comment

This is the second Katherine Center book I’ve read. My book club read How To Walk Away a couple years ago. It was fine! Not my usual cup of tea, but we actually had a good discussion around disability, the ethics that therapists should/do follow, etc. I thought Things You Save In A Fire might be a good addition for the Beach Reads presentation that I’m doing for work. Cassie Hanwell is a 26 year old fire fighter. She’s also a rising star in the […]

“[She] knew that this was her life. Better to be immersed in it than to see it from afar.”

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

by Leave a Comment

I really enjoy this book and I think this is my second or third time reading it. Some Luck follows the Langdon family, who start off as farmers in Iowa. Each chapter is one year in their lives, and that concept makes this book very readable, as it moves along at a fast pace. This is the first book in a trilogy and covers 1920 to 1953. I think the thing that makes this book more than a gimmick is Jane Smiley’s beautiful prose — there are […]

“I felt that I was now old enough to become fussy and spinsterish if I wanted to:” A Gentle Post-War Comedy of Manners

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

by Leave a Comment

This is a fast read but it has a lot of depth to it. I enjoyed it and it was the kind of book that surprises you and is counter to what you were expecting, in a good way. Excellent Women was a little outside of my normal reading pattern in that I’m not always a literary fiction type person, but this turned out to be more of a comedy of manners novel than the literary accolades suggested. And it’s good to broaden one’s reading […]

Runaway…

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

by Leave a Comment

Wow. So this book bounced all over the place and my brain still feels fizzy because there was a lot of things going on, but boy did I love this book! I loved Bernadette, Bee, their weird dog Ice Cream, and I loved the emails and letters between two women who I would have throttled if I ever met in real life (Audrey Griffin and Soo-Lin). This book was in parts funny and sad and back to funny again. I picked this because I wanted […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo