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:

“Failure cannot be understood in theory, only in practice, sometimes over and over and over again.”

James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes by James Acaster

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Cbr13bingo Free! Bingo #2 – diagonal I received this book as a gift from my husband last year because we are big fans of British panel shows and comedian James Acaster, who is all over them. Look at me reading another memoir, my fourth in a row!! This one is clearly different from the previous three in that it is by a male and it is comedic. James Acaster is a thirty-something British comedian, perhaps not terribly well known in the US but a popular […]

A Pandemic Diary and a Chronicle of Grief

This Will All Be Over Soon: A Memoir by Cecily Strong

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Cbr13bingo Fauna, Bingo #1 (Flora to Fauna) I’m on a roll with memoirs, this being my third in a row. Cecily Strong of SNL fame spent 2020 the way many of us did — holed up at home trying to get through the early stages of the pandemic. She and a couple of friends left NYC for a house rental in a more remote area of New York where she struggled with fear of the virus and the loss of people close to her. Yet […]

This will be one of my CBR13 favorites

Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life From Scratch by Erin French

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Cbr13bingo Flora I would guess that fewer than 5% of the book reviews I’ve done over the years have been non-fiction, and I can only think of one that had anything to do with cooking, so reading a memoir about a chef (even though she calls herself a cook, not a chef) would seem way outside my area of interest. And yet, this memoir is probably going to be one of my CBR13 favorites. It is an incredible story of resilience in the face of […]

Remembering

Rememberings: Scenes From My Complicated Life by Sinead O’Connor

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Cbr13bingo Pandemic This book got a lot of attention when it was released a few months ago, largely because of a story O’Connor tells about Prince which puts him in a none-too-flattering light. As far as I’m concerned though this memoir is more impressive for the honesty and soul-bearing of its author. Full disclosure: I have been a fan of Sinead O’Connor since I first heard the single “Mandinka” in 1987/88. She is one of those female artists who have been kicked around over the […]

Clytemnestra’s story

Helen Had a Sister: A Tale of Ancient Greece (formerly Princess of Sparta) by Penelope Haines

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Cbr13bingo Mythic I was excited to see the “Mythic” square on this year’s bingo card. I do enjoy myths and there are so many excellent re-tellings out there, including Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and Miller’s Circe. Penelope Haines’ Helen Had a Sister, like these other novels, takes a lesser known female character from the Trojan War/Iliad and gives us her story. This time, it’s Clytemnestra (aka Nestra), a Spartan princess, older sister to Helen, wife of Agamemnon, […]

Code Switching Times Two

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

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Cbr13bingo Book Club (Good Morning America Book Club selection) The J.P. Morgan Library in New York is world renowned for its manuscript and art collections thanks to its first librarian Belle da Costa Greene. She served as J.P. Morgan’s first and only personal librarian from 1905-1913, and then as the librarian for the Morgan Library until 1948. Belle became famous in her time with J.P. Morgan because she was the only woman working in a field of trained specialists and wealthy collectors from around the […]



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