Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About elderberrywine

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Elder LOTR/Holmes fan girl/writer since forever.

elderberrywine's Reviews:

Let’s Try This Again

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

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When I was in high school, being a “college track” kid, we had a choice of only one fine arts elective.  For me, it would always be music, never art.  And when I got to college, art was the one elective I could never take, because the textbooks were just so damn expensive.  So even though, I love a good museum, and am willing to examine just about anything that hangs on the walls (looking at you Frank Stella with your solid black canvas – […]

Love Among the Feral Set

The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

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If you have ever been exposed to the world of the British landed gentry (in books only, obv!), it is generally on the male side.  The young lads attend a public school (such as Eton), go off to one of the Oxbridge colleges, and then emerge as captains of the Empire.  The female side?  Not even close. My first exposure to their bizarre world was <i>Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford</i>, which I read and reviewed earlier this year.  The Mitford sisters were six in […]

Medieval Lady Pirate Cruising the Indian Ocean? Hot Damn.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Shakraborty

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So I found a second new favorite genre this year.  The first is Mexican (actually Latin American) Gothic, and the second is now medieval Middle Eastern lady pirates.  One might think this is a narrow category, but there was The Stardust Thief, which I read a few books back.  This promises to be the first of a trilogy, and the author has a previous trilogy, The City of Brass, which is on its way from Powells even as we speak.  In other words, I am […]

Osso Buco, You Say? Jambalaya? Why, yes!

My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee

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This book seemed to me, like a mashup of two separate stories – both starring the same protagonist, but in very different settings and genres. One of them I was enjoying very much initially but by the end, it was definitely heading off the rails.  The other started off fairly nondescript, but then started to find its mojo, and I ended up liking that one very much.  Weird. Our hero, Tiller, is a bored college student from New Jersey.  He gets swept up by a […]

So Tasty!

Some Everyday Folk and Dawn by Miles Franklin

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cbr16 bingo celestial Miles Franklin is a turn of the century Australian author who is most famous for My Brilliant Career (I have neither read nor seen the movie, but I think that shall change in the near future).  It was published in 1901, when she was 16 years old.  Her follow-up, to give you a taste of her style, was titled My Career Goes Bung.  I have never read a voice quite like hers, and am enjoying it immensely. This is an exciting time […]

Makes You Wanna Holla

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

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cbr16 bingo Rage New Orleans East is a section of town, within the city’s borders, that is nothing like the rest of New Orleans.  It was reclaimed swampland, drained by a couple of Texan developers in the 1950s for the city of tomorrow.  New Orleans was booming at the time, with a massive NASA plant building the Titan rockets.  (Made sense – there was a harbor and it was halfway between Houston and Cape Canaveral.)  New Orleans East was supposed to draw in all the […]



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