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Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About Mswas Administrator

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Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Mswas Administrator's Reviews:

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CBR12 Wrap Up Draft

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Well, 2020 was something, wasn’t it? I’d love to tell you that Cannonball Read chugged along smoothly last year, unaffected by any issues related to the pandemic. But faintingviolet and I decided in December 2019 that 2020 would be PERFECT year to celebrate five years of #CannonBookClub by revisiting our first book – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. The only problem is that Station Eleven is set in a future where Earth survives a virulent and deadly virus, just barely. Yes that’s right. Our first book club choice for 2020 was a story about a pandemic. Brilliant! Continuing on, the pandemic’s pall made everything difficult, even books people were reading–let alone trying to review. Many of us were reading and not reviewing, and many of us weren’t reading at all.

Still Cannonball Read persevered. We started our first CBR comment diversion series, asking folks to weigh in on all kinds of things, from dream casting their favorite book series, to summer read recommendations, to a “caption this” post. The third annual Book Bingo Reading Challenge kicked off in July and garnered 495 reviews from 37 players. We heard from lots of folks that bingo really revived their reading mojo, and we were thrilled to hear it. (We’ll be doing a 4th this year for sure.) We heard from lots of authors who took the time to tell us how impressed they were with our reviews and mission.

After we survived the Station Eleven reread, we celebrated Pride Month the Cannonball way with a The Future is Queer book club focusing on speculative and science fiction written by and/or featuring LGBTQ+ characters. This was our first book club to offer multiple book titles from which to select, and it made it much easier for folks to participate. We finally got to The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel’s next published work after Station Eleven in October. You can still read and contribute to that discussion post. This year’s book club choices are still under consideration, so watch the CBR book club page for more details.

We finished out the year with not only our usual holiday book exchange but our first ever CBR Zoom Holiday party! We’ll definitely be doing more virtual events, so follow CBR on social media to stay in the know.

Donations to the American Cancer Society

Cannonball Read’s mission is to raise money for the American Cancer Society in the name of the late, great Pajiban, AlabamaPink. Fundraising drives were a big ask for 2020, but we are so grateful for all of Cannonball Read’s supporters who were able to contribute. Our efforts led to an annual donation of $1,650, which was only slightly less than 2019. All things considered, we’re counting that as a success. Also a success – the wonderful volunteers managing our newsletter, social media, bookclub, bingo and much more. Cannonball Read could not run without them. If you’d like to join this fabulous crew, drop MsWas a line.

First to 52

The first person to read and review 52 books last year was BlackRaven, who hit the mark at the end of January with her review of Genius by Steven T. Seagle. A specialist in books for younger readers, BlackRaven has been a pillar of the Cannonball Read community since 2018, reviewing over 1,400 titles in that time.

BlackRaven is at the top of the list below, which i’ll includ in entirety from the 2020 stats wrap-up post provided so diligently by Cannonballer ingres77. They are powerhouses, every one of them.

Top 20 Reviewers CBR1-12: (total reviews; ranking in 2020)
1. vel veeter (2,401; 1st)
2. BlackRaven (1,474; 5th)
3. Malin (1,344; 3rd)
4. narfna (1,315; 4th)
5. badkittyuno (1,261; 2nd)
6. Jen K (831; 6th)
7. bonnie (783; 7th)
8. Sophia (664; 9th)
9. Caitlin_D (630; 8th)
10. faintingviolet (587; 10th)
11. emmalita (529; 18th)
12. scootsa1000 (529; 12th)
13. Prisco (494; 11th)
14. alwaysanswerb (485; 13th)
15. ElCicco (482; 15th)
16. ASKReviews (473; 14th)
17. Mrs. Julien (430; 16th)
18. Classic (421; 17th)
19. Jake (396; 42nd)
20. Valyruh (364; 19th)

Last year we featured 207 reviews from more than 100 Cannonballers in Pajiba Love, and I’ve heard from a number of people that those featured reviews prompted them to sign up for CBR13. Other details on the year:

Top 5 Most Popular Books:
tie-1. Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (13 reviews, 4.3 average)
tie-1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (13 reviews, 4.6 average)
3. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (12 reviews, 3.9 average)
4. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (11 reviews, 4.0 average)
5. Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Tailia Hibbert (9 reviews, 3.7 average)
t-6. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (8reviews, 4.6 average)
t-6. The Disasters by MK England (8 reviews, 3.5 average)
t-6. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow (8 reviews, 4.0 average)
t-9. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (7 reviews, 3.0 average)
t-10. Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow (7 reviews, 4.4 average)
t-10. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (7 reviews, 4.2 average)

Top 5 Most Popular Authors:
1. Stephen King (37 reviews): For the second year in a row (and third time overall)
2. Emily St. John Mandel (28 reviews)
3. Brandon Sanderson (27 reviews)
4. Agatha Christie (24 reviews)
5. Seanan McGuire (22 reviews)

Cannonball Read 12 Final Standings

I’m so proud of every single one of these folks below. They pushed through the miasma of the pandemic to click on that publish button. How great is that?? According to our records, this is the final tally for Cannonball Read 12. You can check out leaderboards from prior years, and see how you and others fared in other Reads. (If your number below is inaccurate, please contact MsWas for corrections.)

Decuple Cannonball (520+)
BlackRaven 437

Triple Cannonball (156+)
Jake 192
octothorp 141
Malin 107

Full Cannonball (52+) – 15 people
pixifer 76
Wanderlustful 68
randirock 60
thewheelbarrow 53
ElCicco 52
KimMiE” 52
The Chancellor 52
ASKReviews 52

Half Cannonball (26+) – 20 people
Dome’Loki 42
scootsa1000 39
teresaelectro 38
Aquillia 37
Carriejay 34
Ale 31
Jen K 29
Ellesfena 27
badkittyuno 26
Caesar’s Wife 26

Quarter Cannonball (13+) – 17 people
Tracy 24
kittenkong42 18
MarkAbaddon 18
tiny_bookbot 15
kniki 15
cosbrarian 13
Professor FluffyKitten 13
Sidewriter 13
Amanda
Beth Ellen
Blingle Bells
caragwapa
chrispychrust
Claire Badger
esmemoria
genericwhitegirl
J
jillster85
kella
KStar
LanierHgts
LeslieG
lumenatrix
Mars2916
NoNeinNyet
philrockwell
plaidhamster
reginadelmar
The Mama
tillie
xoxoxoe
Zirza

If you’ve always thought about joining Cannonball Read, or if this is the first you’re hearing of us, consider making 2021 your year to officially sign up. Open registration for Cannonball Read 13 ends on January 31, 2021.

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not a book review

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But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it?

Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

The perfect emotional gut-punch for the time

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Welcome to Cannonball Read 13


In contrast to my last book review, where I thought reading about a plague probably wasn’t the best read for the current time, An Unkindness of Ghosts is the perfect book to read during this week especially. More than that, it is an important book to read during this week.

And I am completely, utterly, devastatingly unqualified to review it.

An Unkindness of Ghosts is an emotional gut-punch throughout. The premise alone is brilliant: a spaceship, the Matilda, is taking the remnants of humanity to an unknown destination, a future home. But whatever happened to Earth has done nothing to unite humanity: in fact, the decks (lettered A-Z) are organized according to class, with the lowest decks, the “Tarlands” accorded to the field hands–Black people. It’s of course not unfamiliar; “organized like the antebellum South”, the blurb reads.

The story centers on Aster, a doctor and scientist. Primarily, Aster wants to find out what happened to her mother 25 years before–why this brilliant, seemingly mentally-unstable woman committed “self-murder” just after Aster’s death. This quest drives the plot, even as other factors press in around it and intertwine: Aster’s complicated relationship to the Surgeon, a half-Black (but passing as white) doctor who supports her education and so much more; her sense of identity and belonging with the people she grew up with, although the nuances are difficult for her to comprehend; her own gender identity and sense of self; and of course the knowledge that the entire system aboard the Matilda is unfair.

Solomon’s writing is fantastic, and everything is woven together so beautifully and perfectly. The brief POV switches to other important characters provides a jarring contrast to Aster’s own way of seeing the world (I especially loved the bits from Aster’s “sister” Giselle). (On this note, I think Aster is intended to be on the autism spectrum–the way she sees the world, can’t understand nuance and sarcasm, delayed speech, etc. But nothing is stated about this, perhaps because such diagnoses did not exist on the Matilda or because those who might diagnose them wouldn’t care about someone like Aster.) The issues have been transported seamlessly to a sci-fi setting and updated in the process. The exploration of gender woven throughout is fascinating, both in Aster’s own sense of self (as well as Theo/the Surgeon’s), but also in the way gender seems so rigidly defined in the abovedecks and so fluid in the lowerdecks. And of course, the issue of inequality and cruelty and hatred is very much relevant to our time.

And I must state again here just how unqualified I am to expound on any of these issues. I am from a very white background both in where I grew up and in my field of study (unfortunately) and enormously privileged in so many ways. I also rarely step into sci-fi, so even aside from the more pressing issues it’s difficult for me to analyse this as I would fantasy. But I am hugely grateful that An Unkindness of Ghosts was one of this month’s book club picks. It had been on my radar, as in I’d heard other book people talking about it via BookTwitter, and the premise alone is fantastic. But I’m not sure I ever really would have picked it up without the impetus, and that’s on me. So, thank you to #CannonBookClub. I hope others will also read it before the discussions in a few weeks, as I am really looking forward to discussing it with people who might have other perspectives to offer.

As a last thought, it feels weird to give this a star rating. I enjoyed it immensely and have no qualms about giving it 5 stars (as I have) but it feels so trivial to be like “five stars! great read!”

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The Owl and the Pussycat by Kazuo Ishiguro

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They danced by the light of the moon

The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

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It’s International Children’s Book Day! Are you reading stories to young kids or wishing someone would read to you?

To honor this holiday, which celebrate the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, I’ve recorded a video of me reading a pop-up children’s book of the poem The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear.

 

I’ve read this book hundreds of times over the years, and the last page always gives me a thrill, “And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon. The moon, the moon. They danced by the light of the moon.”  It’s so calm and lovely.

It also always reminds me of the scenes in It’s a Wonderful Life where they sing the song Buffalo Gals, badly and out of tune on the night of their first date.

My older daughter received this book as a Christmas gift in 1999 from my parents, and those who know our family will get that it was so long ago, it was before my father was called Pop-pop.

I hope you enjoy my little reading. You can also watch videos of other Cannonballers reading Kid Lit in the Cannonball Read Book Chat Facebook group. Enjoy!

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