Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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World War II meets King Arthur’s Court

The Metropolitans by Carol Goodman

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Set in WWII New York, four kids find themselves at the MET on a cold Sunday afternoon, each dealing with a hand far heavier than any teen should be dealt. Walt was sent to live with family in the US to keep out of Hitler’s grasp. Kiko is a young Chinese girl who looks too much like the enemy to ever be trusted. Madge has been separated from her siblings as a result of her father’s overwhelming grief over her mother’s passing and all she […]

Not the plucky pilot story I expected…

Flyboys by James Bradley

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Flyboys is a true, brutally honest and gut wrenching account of World War II on the Pacific front, focusing on “war in the third dimension” more commonly known as air combat. The story starts at Pearl Harbor, moving through the United States’ clamor to build aircraft and train pilots, to the napalm bombing of Japan and finally the dropping of the two atomic bombs. It’s highlights all the key players in the uprising of military flying: An introduction to Hap Arnold, the leader of the […]

crystalclear read my mind!

The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian

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Way back in the olden days of 2020, the amazing crystalclear sent some inspired picks my way for CBR Book Exchange. Hooray! I kicked off the new year with one of their thoughtful additions to my TBR pile; I had wanted to read Storm Front for some time thanks to the lovely folks here at CBR. The other book, The Light in the Ruins, was a book with which I was unfamiliar. I was immediately excited and impressed after reading the cover copy, as I […]

“Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators …. But they don’t carry it the way victims do.“

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisenger, Steven Scott, Harmony Becker

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Cbr12bingo Shelfie This graphic novel geared toward young readers is an eye opening first hand account of the Takei family’s experience in the US’s Japanese internment camps during WWII. World renowned actor George Takei relates his childhood memories of being uprooted and shipped across the country with his family and reveals his subsequent struggle to come to terms with the injustice and trauma of those years. Even though many of us may have heard about the camps before (thanks in part to the hard work […]

Lady Spies Rule

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

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I grabbed this book during my last in-person visit to the library where I was panic grabbing books to stock up prior to the closure. I’ve been a big fan of Reese’s book club and dove back to the beginning: this was the second of her picks (I had already read and enjoyed her first pick, “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.” This book was interesting but took a lot for me to get through, which I think was a combo of it’s hard to focus […]

A Stiff Upper Lip and a Blind Eye

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Oh, Mr. Stevens. A tragic hero if ever there was one. As a butler to a great house of Britain, he kept his eyes to the floor while the ravages of post-WWI Europe came to a boiling point in the halls of his dear Darlington Hall. Kazuo Ishiguro is a master of quiet suffering. His characters come to slow, stark, and utterly devastating conclusions just a moment before the enormity of their despair hits the reader. The Remains of the Day is arguably  his most celebrated […]



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