Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About crystalclear

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Crystalclear can usually think of something clever to say, except when she can't. She has a giant stack of unread books at home but will always find an excuse to buy/acquire/borrow another one. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: crystalclear's Quick Questions interview.)

crystalclear's Reviews:

Is this creepier because I’m reading as an adult?

Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli

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When I first started reading this, I did not like it.  I almost passed it off as a loss entirely. The thing that turned me off was the language.  It reminded me of the words that the BFG used, and the story in general interested me from the summary, so I pressed on.  The BFG used strange words because he never went to school, and the children in the story are very young, some younger than school age, I suppose.  And I noticed that the […]

One of the good ones

Valiant by Sarah McGuire

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If you just search for the title on Amazon, you don’t get this book until somewhere after the 10th page of results, and it’s on the 4th page if you search just books.  That’s just sad, because it’s really a good book. Well this one starts off sad, doesn’t it?  We start with a young woman, Saville, traveling with her father to a new city away from her mother’s grave.  And her father is an ass. He is a tailor who somehow sews things differently? […]

Hopefully, there’s nowhere to go but up!

Three Dates with Mr. Darcy by Elizabeth Ann West

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This is a book of Pride and Prejudice variations by Elizabeth Ann West.  I am not particularly pleased with any of them, although the first at least has an ending of sorts.  (And there are no actual ‘dates’ like we think of today.  Title fail.)  Hopefully my journey through P&P variations gets better from here. “Much to Conceal” In this story, Elizabeth reveals to Jane in London what happened with the disastrous proposal in Hunsford a week prior.  Jane and their Aunt Gardiner plot to […]

Good, eh, okay, and sweet

A Very Austen Christmas by Robin Helm, Laura Hile, Wendi Sotis, Barbara Cornthwaite

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So I was inspired by my lovely book exchange gifts to attempt to read through all of the Pride and Prejudice variations I currently own.  I say “attempt” because it’s a lot.  I started off with A Very Austen Christmas, an anthology of Christmas stories, because it’s seasonal I guess.  And the wifi is broken at my house, so that means more reading at home instead of noodling around on the internet! “Her Christmas Gift” by Robin Helm This is a Pride and Prejudice story, […]

Not just a mystery, but an educational mystery

The Ghost Wore Gray by Bruce Coville

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We have a tradition at our annual work party of a book exchange.  You get a book that has something to do with history (I work at a historic site) and you gift-wrap it.  Everyone who brings a book gets a number, and then the first person unwraps a book. The next person can either unwrap a book or steal the book the first person unwrapped, and so on.  Most people try not to spend much, if anything on the book. So I went to […]

A promising start for a new author

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

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So, we have Alice and her mother Ella living a fairly transient lifestyle.  They seem to constantly run in to bad luck. Things catch fire, or strange things happen, and Alice even gets kidnapped once.  Ella’s mother, Althea, is an author of a book, Tales from the Hinterland.  It’s a book of dark fairy tales that is no longer published, but has a fanatical cult following.  It’s also a book that Alice has never read, despite her efforts to find a copy. One day they […]



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