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:

Provocative, uneven collection of essays (Bingo!)

The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist by Richard P. Feynman

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Cbr11bingo Science. BINGO! These essays are by turns provocative and exasperating. Richard P. Feynman, who died in 1988, was a brilliant physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1965. He also was part of the Manhattan Project, was a distinguished lecturer at Cal Tech, and served as a member of the Rogers Commission which investigated the Challenger disaster. The Meaning of It All is a short collection of three lectures that Feynman gave in 1963. In these lectures his goal was to discuss the impact […]

Introducing Holmes and Watson

A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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Cbr11bingo Pajiba Reviewing mysteries is tough. One has to be careful not to spoil the story for others, and yet often the very issue I would want to address in my review is directly related to the big reveal in the story. I will do my best not to spoil A Study in Scarlet for others while trying to convey my concerns with it. A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887, is the first Sherlock Holmes mystery. The reader sees Holmes through the eyes of […]

Phileas Fogg is the most interesting man in the world

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

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Cbr11bingo Travel This classic 1873 novel by Jules Verne was an utter delight! I am somewhat ashamed to admit that this is the first Jules Verne novel I’ve read and that I really knew nothing at all about it when I picked it up. Turns out, that worked to my advantage, as I was on the edge of my seat, eagerly turning each page to see whether Phileas Fogg would win his wager to travel around the world in 80 days. This book is part […]

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Snowpiercer 2: The Explorers by Benjamin LeGrand and Jean-Marc Rochette

Snowpiercer 3: Terminus by Olivier Bocquet and Jean-Marc Rochette

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Cbr11bingo Illustrated The Snowpiercer trilogy is an example of the whole being less than the sum of its parts. I was on board after the first volume. It hinted at some very interesting history for its main character Proloff, as well as complex, sinister military and political machinations that precipitated the endless, deadly winter that has engulfed the world and forced survivors onto the Snowpiercer, a perpetually moving train. The reader was left with a number of cliffhangers at the end of that volume. And […]

And so it begins

Snowpiercer Vol. I: The Escape by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette

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Cbr11bingo And So It Begins Snowpiercer is a French graphic novel in several volumes. Volume I: The Escape was originally published in 1982. Two later volumes appeared in 1999. The English translations were published in 2014, after the film version with Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton came out. Snowpiercer is a work of dystopian fiction, taking place in a world where cataclysmic climate change has turned the Earth into an uninhabitable frozen wasteland. Snowpiercer is a locomotive 1,001 cars long housing the humans who managed […]

Take note

Notes to Self: Essays by Emilie Pine

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CBR11bingo The Collection This collection of essays by Emilie Pine was just released in the US but came out to much acclaim in Ireland last year. Pine, who is Associate Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin, has written six essays that relate to deeply personal issues for her, but which will resonate with women everywhere. In her author’s note, she writes that these essays began with a family crisis. Once the crisis passed,  …I discovered that I was still lost, still trying to […]



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