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:

“Robert Isaksson from the next village over was a reindeer killer.”

Stolen: A Novel by Ann-Helen Laestadius, trans. Rachel Willson-Broyles

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CBR15passport books from different countries (Sweden/Sapmi) Stolen, by Ann-Helen Laestadius, is a novel that is dark, disturbing and based in reality. It is the fictional story of Elsa, a 9-year-old Sami girl, who witnesses the brutal killing of her reindeer calf and is then threatened with death by the man who did it. But Stolen is also the real story of the Sami, an indigenous minority whose lives, culture and history are tied to herding reindeer and who have been persecuted by their neighbors for […]

So much for pacing myself

A Kiss for Midwinter by Courtney Milan

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After The Duchess War, I decided to take a break from Milan just so I wouldn’t finish the series too quickly. Yesterday, I started a novel that is good but kind of grim. Last night, I thought I would just take a look at the next book in the “Brothers Sinister” series, the novella A Kiss for Midwinter, and here we are. This is a holiday story that I know some Cannonballers like to reread at Christmastime, and, in the way of Milan, it offers […]

Fathers and Children

The Duchess War by Courtney Milan

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The Duchess War, while listed as Book 1 in a series, is actually a sequel to the novella The Governess Affair. This novel picks up almost 30 years after the events of the novella and focuses on the next generation of characters. As with The Governess Affair, author Courtney Milan does a wonderful job of putting the reader in a specific historical period and includes fascinating information about the social and economic situation of the time, in this case, 1863 industrial England. I am officially […]

At the very crowded intersection of Black History and Banned Books

Black Was the Ink by Michelle Coles

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CBR15passport new to you authors On February 1, the first day of Black History month, the news hit that fascist Governor DeSantis disapproved of the curriculum for the AP African American History course and would ban it from being taught in Florida. Not long after this story aired, it was revealed that Florida officials and AP officials had been negotiating the content of this course for some time and it looks like the AP/College Board basically caved to reactionary political demands and agreed to censor […]

Pride, Prejudice and Social Justice

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

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During my high school years, I was introduced to Jane Austen and the Brontes but for some reason never Elizabeth Gaskell. She was a contemporary of the Brontes, friend to and biographer of Charlotte, and in her novel North and South she channels both the dark undercurrents of the Brontes and the romance of Austen. Over the years, on social media, I’ve seen references to “ThorntonThursdays” with pictures and video clips but I only recently discovered that they came from the 2004 BBC series North […]

Gripping story of resilience

Hostage by Guy Delisle

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CBR15Passport books from different countries Hostage is the true story of Christophe Andre, a Frenchman working for Doctors Without Borders in Chechnya who was kidnapped and held for three months. Guy Delisle, a French illustrator and writer, interviewed Andre after his ordeal and turned the taped interviews into a gripping work of graphic biography.  In order to place things in context I had to read up a bit on the Chechen/Russian war of 1994-96. The events in this story take place after that conflict had […]



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