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:

Hooray for Hollywood

The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger

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cbr16 bingo Fanfic Growing up in mid-century Palm Springs, summers could be long and boring (no pool).  TV options were very limited, but there was the mid-afternoon Million Dollar Movie.  That was my mom’s favorite thing to watch as she did the ironing (everything was cotton – there was a lot of ironing for a six-person family) so I would get sucked in too.  I can credit those summers with being familiar with all the actors in this book. This is a very detailed look […]

When in doubt, tea.

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

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cbr16bingo golden Mrs. Palfrey, recently widowed, has had to make a decision regarding the rest of her life.  She has no home of her own, since she had spent most of her life stationed in Burma with her husband.  She had been temporarily staying with her daughter in Scotland, but clearly that was no permanent solution.  So she eyed the London papers and settled on the Claremont Hotel in South Kensington.  After all, her grandson, whom she had rarely seen, worked nearby at the British […]

Looking to Raise Your Blood Pressure? Here Ya Go.

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

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cbr16 bingo cults This book went on my To-Read list decades ago, when the Warren Jeffs scandal was still new.  For me, I couldn’t understand why a woman would put up with this.  This on-the-ground account is revelatory and explains the dynamics that are still at work today. Carolyn Jessop was a sixth generation Mormon, and not your mainstream Mormon, but a member of FLDS, a fundamentalist cult (since it has been disavowed by the mainstream church, I’m gonna call it what it is.)  At […]

Could This Guy Possibly Be More Ridiculous?

Caleb Williams by William Godwin

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cbr16 bingo Fiasco Well this was a hot mess and a half.  Now I have read many a 17th and 18th century book, but this was a whole different thing.  This was written in 1794, to be sure, but only fifteen years later, Jane Austin was publishing novels that were immensely readable with characters to whom we can relate even to this day.  Godwin?  Not so much.  There was a serviceable plot here, to be sure, but buried under mountains of verbose nonsense.  And the […]

Definitely a Whole New World

The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah

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bcr16bingo rings As a child, and an early reader, I was totally hooked on fairy tales, especially the more obscure ones from Andrew Lang.  I loved his “color” collections – the Red Fairy Tale Book, the Purple Fairy Tale Book, the (I kid you not) Olive Fairy Tale Book.  There were so many of them but never enough.  Then later on, I branched out to fairy tale-adjacent, such as Bullfinch’s Mythology, and the Ricard Burton collection of the Arabian Nights.  So I had some knowledge […]

Apparently, “Feminism” Is Done and Dusted

The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick by Elizabeth Hardwick

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cbr16bingo and also This is a collection of essays written from approximately 1950 through 1990 by proto-feminist Elizabeth Hardwick, primarily for magazines, and more importantly, magazines for the female reader such as Vogue, House & Garden, and Mademoiselle.  They are on various random topics such as cheese grits and Parsifal, but the bulk of them are on political topics or what she referred to as “the feminine principle”.  Let’s take a look. The old feminist, the brilliant, self-assertive, daring, reforming woman is as extinct as […]



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