Q&A with a Cannonballer: yesknopemaybe takes a break from running the CBR Tumblr page to answer some questions
How many times have you participated in CBR?
I did one review for CBR5 and then stopped because I was paralyzed by writing anxiety. Finally for CBR7, I said fuck it and signed up again, willing myself to not care so much and just write.
Has being a participant changed the way you read? If so, how?
It’s definitely influenced my reading list. I finally have all the bookish friends I could ask for with THE best taste in books. Some of my favorite reads of the last few years were only on my radar because Cannonballers recommended them.
See what else yesknopemaybe has to say »
#CannonBookClub: Vote by April 19
It’s time to vote for the June selection in Cannonball Read’s #CannonBookClub! Up next: Non-Fiction, Hollywood style. Choose between Hadley Freeman’s book about how 80s movies changed movie-making forever, Peter Biskind’s Rise of Independent Film about Miramax and Sundance, William J. Mann’s book on 1920s Hollywood scandals, and a book about Breakfast at Tiffany’s and its influence on American culture. Choose one by April 19 for the June discussion. Then read up, and get ready to join in on June 14. Remember, only votes on the poll count - we can't count the ones in the comment section.
Cannonball update
As the inexhaustible ingres77 said, "we are on fire this year." Check out the stats post for a look at what Cannonballers are reading at an impressive pace.
Also, we've made the year's first donation to the American Cancer Society: $150 for the first quarter. Excellent work, team! Keep reading and posting and clicking!
Hallelujah for new tags
MsWas has seen fit to bestow upon us a new category, in the form of #Religion. While you're clicking the little genre box and tagging your posts, you can now choose Religion as a category, which also makes it searchable. (You are tagging your posts, right? Just add the author's name and your name, and whatever else you feel is a good identifier.)
Mark your calendar
Saturday, April 29 is Independent Bookstore Day! Plot out your routes now, and see how many you can hit in a day. Much as we love our Amazon Buy Hole, there's still something special about a brick and mortar bookstore.
April is a good month for books, as last week was National Library Week. In honor of libraries, MsWas posted one of her rare book reviews. Did you catch this lovely story of tracking down an author who was also a librarian?
CBR Style Tips: Un-underline those titles
When talking titles of books, TV shows, and movies, stick with italics. When expressing intensity, go bold. Underlining text makes it look like a link, and when every click counts to raise money for the American Cancer Society, we need to make sure the links stand out. For example, yesknopemaybe might say, "You guys should all read Station Eleven, it is so good!"
Your TBR list could handle a few more titles, right?
Attention science fiction fans! The Hugo Awards have released their list of finalists, which leave me feeling smug about loving the ones I've already read, and frantically searching the library catalog for the rest. It's not strictly books and sci-fi, though: they also cover art, TV, fanzines, and more (CBR favorite Chuck Tingle even makes an appearance!), if you need recommendations for new favorites.
(Shoutout to my girl Lois McMaster Bujold and the Vorkosigan Saga making it in for Best Series. If you have not read these, consider yourself peer pressured.)
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Apr 11, 2021 08:15 pm
Sigh. Why can’t books like this be easier to review? There’s so much to like about Ava Barry’s debut novel Windhall…and so much that grated on my nerves. I really wanted to push this to a charity first-book-4-star review and I just couldn’t. The book kind of feels like the version of the decaying mansion at the center of the story: beautiful and glamorous but uninhabitable and far past its prime. Probably easier with this one to pull out the old good/bad formula: Good: -The book […]
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Apr 11, 2021 07:37 pm
Kate Clayborn’s spectacular Love Lettering was the first book I read in 2020. Now, while the rest of the year didn’t work out so well, I can’t deny that it was an amazing reading year for me, and now Love at First looks like it’s continuing that tradition. I am an absolute sucker for a found family story, and this is an expert exploration of that trope and its power. It’s also got a bit of a Romeo & Juliet feel, and since that’s literally […]
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Apr 11, 2021 06:00 pm
Apparently there is a book blurb that refers to this book as “Game of Thrones meets Ocean’s Eleven.” I get a little hesitant and skeptical when books are presented in contrast with other popular things, mostly I think because someone once told me I’d like Twilight because it was like “Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” NO. FALSE. HOW DARE YOU. So you can see where I’d be a little scarred by pop culture comparisons. That said, the Thrones meets Eleven analogy is much […]
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Apr 11, 2021 04:06 pm
In the early pandemic times, when I had that “new pandemic energy,” I started reading the first books of The Babysitter’s Club series on Facebook live, adding in my own color commentary. It was a hit, I mean TENS of people tuned in (heh). Like a lot of new quirky pandemic hobbies (I’m looking at you, sourdough starter) it soon lost it’s luster and I only made it like 2 and a half books in, and I stowed the books on my book shelf in […]
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Apr 11, 2021 03:55 pm
Hugh Standish, the Earl of Fareham, has a bit of a problem. His mother is coming to visit, all the way from America, to meet his fiancée. His fiancée who Hugh has entirely made up to stop his mother from matchmaking. Hugh has created an entirely fictional fiancée named Minerva, and he’s about to get caught. Or is he? Hugh happens to come to the rescue of a young lady trying to claim her earnings from an advertisement she created illustrations for. And just […]
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Amanda Howard (aka "Bothari43")
The Cannonball Read Newsletter Nerd
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