February 2020
MsWas's Message Corner
Hello CBR12 participants and friends of Cannonball Read,
If you've been looking at reviews recently, you may have noticed that the box for the links to Amazon at the bottom of reviews isn't showing up. We're currently in a dispute with Amazon over their terms of agreement for affiliate accounts, so ours is (hopefully just temporarily) down. We should hear something final within the week. For now, I ask that you still fill in that required field just in case we can resume those links.
As for us, the loss of the affiliate accounts is quite a loss for our fundraising efforts. Proceeds from Amazon made up about 20% of last year's total. Still, our mission continues to donate to the American Cancer Society any proceeds that the site generates above what’s required to run/maintain it on the server. I donate all of my time, as do our volunteers. (We do contract with an awesome developer to run and troubleshoot our points system and other more complicated programming. Most of the other site maintenance is done by me.)
Please consider making a donation today to help us offset this loss. You can donate through Paypal; Venmo (cannonball-read); and Google Pay (to Gmail address mswas.cannonballread@gmail.com). You can also support us by buying CBR merchandise on RedBubble, and sharing links to get more traffic to the group blog.
Let's keep sticking it to cancer, one book at a time!
Take care and Happy Reading!
Bonnie (aka "MsWas")
Q&A with a Cannonballer: Rachel
 The readership loves your end-of-post stats! Have you always tracked how long it took you to finish a book, etc., or did you start that for CBR?
I started tracking how long it took me to read a book several years ago. Goodreads makes it very simple for me to track all of my books, even when I started and finished reading based on when I update my progress in a book. Before Goodreads, I used a good old pen and paper, and I have tracked every book I have read since the eighth grade! Participating in CBR helps me remember what I read since I attempt to write a thoughtful review.
#CannonBookClub
We're doing some fun stuff with this year's #CannonBookClubs! On March 20 and 21, we're doing a Station Eleven reread to get ready for Emily St. John Mandel's next book, The Glass Hotel. June 19 and 20 we’ll be celebrating Pride Month the Cannonball way with The Future is Queer book club focusing on speculative and science fiction written by and/or featuring LGBTQ+ characters. See the announcement post for the choices.
Each #CannonBookClub discussion will take place over two days so folks from all sorts of time zones can jump in. The main discussion will be on the group blog, on a discussion post that goes up the first day. If you're thirsty for even more discussion, you can also chime in on our social media. Here's the schedule so far. Stay tuned for more details!
- Station Eleven - March 20-21
- The Future is Queer theme - June 19-20
- The Glass Hotel - October 16-17
New category: Fanfiction
Fanfiction is now an option in what you read this year. Just make sure that your review is long enough (250+ words), especially if it’s a part of a multi-book review. If your book is not listed on Amazon, in the book info field, please add the information of the original book that your Fanfiction is about. Then in your review, either at the top or the bottom, mention and link to the Fanfiction source.
You'll see the Fanfiction option in the Edit Post> Categories menu. (We use Wordpress "categories" for our Genres.) Select that and publish.
Helpful tips and tricks
Double check your numbers
When you see the review number in the footer of your most recent review, does it match what you think you should have? In the above example, kimberleybear has posted review No:3, with lots of descriptive tags, the number of stars she would give it, and the number of comments the post has so far. So don't forget to fill out your tags and choose a star rating, and double check to make sure Wordpress is calculating your reviews correctly. If not, let MsWas know.
If you happen to scroll all the way down on the Wordpress page while you're composing your review, remember to leave the CBR12 Review Number and CBR12 Review Total fields alone. Those are admin-only fields:
CBR11 recap
If you want to see something impressive, check out the CBR11 recap over on Pajiba. We reviewed 5,349 books and raised $1,675 for the American Cancer Society! Go team! That beats our 4,390 reviews from CBR10. I can't wait to see how we do for CBR12! You can help increase our fundraising this year by donating to CBR.
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Jun 08, 2023 10:26 pm
The Power is actually about the reversal of power. What if the raw, physical power held within the bodies of men was overshadowed by the raw, electrical power generated within the bodies of women? Would this changing of the guards of power cause the scales to rebalance? Would it usher in world peace? Would women, the mothers of all, take on a caring and nurturing role and reset the world to be a functioning matriarchy? Or would power redistribute to bring untold instability? Would this […]
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Jun 08, 2023 06:57 pm
Talk about your groomers. Fin du siècle France, and the world of the grandes horizontales. Léa, the epitome of her genre, has taken on the son of one of her compatriots, to tutor him to please a future wife. She is in her fifties, and he is but fifteen, but that is as it should be. He is devastatingly beautiful, and his mother trusts her friend to bring him up to par for the matrimonial market, shall we say. Alas. after six years, he is […]
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Jun 07, 2023 04:48 pm
Back in February 2023 a book called Sasha & the City of Whispers came out. I did not learn of it until May 2023 when a customer ordered a copy. Finding a readable copy, I read this picture book by Sara Van Horn. Now, the surface story is okay. A girl called Sasha, learns she is not good at doing the tasks her community are tasked with doing. You must always work, work and work. No time for anything else. Their town is loud, no […]
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Jun 07, 2023 04:31 pm
It’s time for another picture book round up review. This time there are two books I enjoyed reading, but did not feel I could honestly do a full review of. Both stories are sweet, but are not necessarily for everyone. Are you looking for a new book about getting out and about on the farm? Well Tzimmes for Tzipporah is a new book (or will be in September 2023) dealing with a farm during harvest time. It is written by Megan Hoyt and Christine Battuz […]
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Jun 07, 2023 04:05 pm
I was looking at some online reader copies the other day. I found one by Justin Madson. And I then saw they had a first book, Tin Man. Or maybe it started another way. I am not sure, because I do not remember even seeing the book that made me want to request this book from my library. But regardless of how it happened to be found, I found myself with a copy of the Tin Man graphic novel. When reading about it, I was […]
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Amanda Howard (aka "Bothari43")
The Cannonball Read Newsletter Editor
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