Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About ElCicco

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Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

ElCicco's Reviews:

Charming start to CBR15

Snowdrift and Other Stories by Georgette Heyer

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I found this collection thanks to one of the many articles that pop up in my social media recommending various types of book to me. I can’t remember what the list was (I think it was some sort of recommendations from the New York Public Library), but given last month’s arrival of snowstorm Elliot plus the overwhelming amount of holiday stuff I had to do, a collection of short stories set in the Regency period seemed like a fun diversion. And it absolutely was! If […]

“…we’re the dream that humanity creates to make sense of the shadows on the cave wall.”

American Gods: Author’s Preferred Text by Neil Gaiman

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I watched the first season American Gods on Starz back in the day, and I really enjoyed it but never bothered with the rest of the series once I heard that the show runner and several stars were out of the project. I’ve had the novel on my shelf ever since, but its length (500+ pages) was a little off-putting. It’s a funny thing though that the “long” stories are often the ones that read the fastest while the “short” ones can be a slog. […]

Dystopian Utopia

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

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Imagine a future where war, poverty, crime, illness, disease and death have been conquered. Sounds like paradise, right? But the thing is, without death, the world becomes overpopulated and all the problems return. In Scythe, the first book in a trilogy, Neal Shusterman imagines this world where all knowledge and information is overseen by a god-like universal information storage system called the Thunderhead and where the world population is “managed” by individuals called scythes. Scythes are feared and revered and are an authority unto themselves. […]

Life: it’s not nothing

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: A Novel by Shehan Karunatilaka

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The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is the winner of this year’s Booker Prize. Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, the action takes place amidst the violence of Tamils versus Sinhalese versus Indians, not to mention a variety of outside groups and organizations connected to them. The main character is a photographer and gambler, the gay son of Burgher/Tamil mother and Sinhalese father. Maali Almeida says he is not on any side partaking in the violence in Sri Lanka, that his goal is to take the […]

Arthurian Legend, Feminist Perspective

Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian

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It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of re-imagined classics: Achilles, Circe, the Trojan women — I love a take on a well known tale from a marginalized perspective. Of course, all of those that I mentioned are Greek myths, with which I have quite a bit of familiarity. On a recent trip to the bookstore I found Half Sick of Shadows, which really piqued my interest — the story of King Arthur and Camelot from the perspective of Elaine Astolat, Lady of […]



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