December 2020
MsWas's Message Corner
Hello CBR12 participants and friends of Cannonball Read,
I could not be more thrilled to see that we raised well over our goal during our November fundraising campaign. So many things are so uncertain, but I should have known that Cannonballers are true of heart; and if they are at all able to, they'll definitely step up. I've heard over and over how much this community means to many of you, and I feel the same. You all keep me going during these trying times, and I hope CBR provides some comfort to you, in addition to some kick-ass books.
We've got a big year ahead for CBR13, and your support makes it all possible. I hope you can make it to our Holiday Zoom Party on the 12th, see below for more details. Have a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year.
--Bonnie (aka "MsWas")
"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life." – Mark Twain
Q&A with a Cannonballer: pixifer
 This is your first CBR, right? What do you think so far? And congratulations on Cannonballing your first time out!
Thank you! Yes, this is my first CBR and I love it. I thought the best part would be finding new books to read but it's actually the social aspect. Which is funny because 80% of the time I decide my comments on other people's reviews aren't worth posting, so I say nothing and just lurk. I should work on that.
Best/Worst of CBR12
Did you read a bunch of good stuff this year? Hopefully there weren't too many bad books in your CBR12, but hey, sometimes those one-star reviews are gold. We want to hear about your faves and least faves of the year! Submit your three best and one worst book of the year by midnight on December 13, and then watch for the wrap-up post on Pajiba the following week.
It's our party and we'll read if we want to
The world has embraced virtual everythings this year, so we're hopping on the bandwagon for our first ever Zoom Holiday Party! Join us Saturday December 12, 2020 at 3pm EST so we can chat, celebrate making it through (almost) 2020, maybe share a few of our picks from our Best/Worst list, and put some faces to screen names. If you're registered for CBR12, you'll receive a link by email, but you can also sign up here to make sure you get the invite.
Fundraising success
Did you hear that? Cannonballers made it to 132% of our goal and raised $1722 during our November fundraising campaign. Lucky donor Merryn won the prize raffle, but everybody who donated got printable Cannonball Read bookmarks designed by our own yesknopemaybe. CBR thanks you, and the American Cancer Society thanks you. And if you missed the campaign, you can still donate whenever you want!
Those of you who donated and received bookmarks: how did they turn out? We'd love to see them in the wild, if you'd like to tag @cannonballread in your pictures on the social media platform of your choosing.
Pruning our social media presence
Next year, Cannonball Read will no longer have a Pinterest or Tumblr presence. It's been fun while it lasted, but we're going to narrow our focus a bit more going forward. Don't forget to check out Goodreads, where we're still going strong. Big thanks to Nart, Cait and Emmalita for pitching in to give our GR page new life.
CBR12 ends at noon on December 31
The end of CBR12 is shockingly close! You have until noon EST on December 31 to post reviews to be counted for this year. You won't be bereft of reviews for too long, though: registration for CBR13 starts on December 12!
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Dec 07, 2020 09:24 am
This is a collection of essays from 1963 by the historian Richard Hofstadter, probably most well know for either this book or for his other well-regarded book Anti-Intellectualism in American History which you can guess what it’s about. This book begins with two essays that lay out a reading of a form of political discourse, especially related to the rise of far right extremism. This is a not a book on paranoia, as he lays out pretty directly, but of a kind of affected paranoiac speech […]
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Dec 07, 2020 09:14 am
Duane’s Depressed – 4/5 Stars This is the third book in the “Last Picture Show” books. While the first novel would work as a perfectly complete novel, and was for 20 years, the second novel, Texasville came out and was surprisingly good. Following up on Duane Moore as a man, married for 20+ years and in his late 40s with kids and grandkids, and seeing about whether the ambivalence he felt at the ambivalence his Texas town felt allowed some decent exploration into the ravages of […]
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Dec 07, 2020 09:09 am
Did I buy this book because I’ve read Maggie O’Farrell before and generally liked her work? Sure. Did I REALLY buy this book because it was a buck at Goodwill and quoted the Talking Heads? Yeah, that’s the main reason. I didn’t even judge a book by its cover, I judged it by the title. This is why I have something like 200 unread books in my house. I have a problem. Anyway, this sort of felt a bit like The Vanishing Act of Esme […]
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Dec 07, 2020 08:43 am
Downside? You get another Series of Unfortunate Events review, which I am tired of writing because my complaints never change (the reviews are pretty much as repetitive as the books) and I struggle to find new ways of saying “condescending, but pretentiously so” without sounding like I just read a thesaurus (but am pretending is my normal speech pattern) like Handler. Upside? I bough all these books together, and I’m not gonna read any more, so this is the last of my SoUE reviews I’ll […]
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Dec 07, 2020 08:08 am
UGH DAMMIT. I just bought an interesting looking book from the remainder pile at my local bookstore. The name sounded familiar and I misattributed it to another author’s reputation, but it’s another Daniel Pink book. That’s not to say that this book was miserable, but I didn’t feel like I learned anything from it either. It has that tone that so many management books have (I’m looking in your direction Thomas Friedman) where the author is so in love with their own work that they […]
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Amanda Howard (aka "Bothari43")
The Cannonball Read Newsletter Editor
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