Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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About elderberrywine

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Elder LOTR/Holmes fan girl/writer since forever.

elderberrywine's Reviews:

Town of Big Shoulders Indeed

The Third Rail by Michael Harvey

September 18, 2025 by elderberrywine Leave a Comment

cbr17bingo Review The Third Rail is the last of a trilogy of gritty Chicago mysteries featuring ex-cop and current PI Michael Kelly.  The first, The Chicago Way, focused on the police department.  The second, The Fifth Floor, expanded to the mayor’s office, and this last installment reached the last of the triumvirate that governs Chicago politics. But let’s start with the plot.  Random women, riding the public transportation system, are being assassinated. Many of the large U.S. cities were, in the 1990s, often a dangerous […]

Filed Under: Fiction, History, Mystery Tagged With: 1990s Chicago, cbr17bingo, City politics, Cover is important, Dark times, Michael Harvey, Michael Kelly PI series, Serial Killer and worse

elderberrywine's CBR17 Review No:49 · Genres: Fiction, History, Mystery · Tags: 1990s Chicago, cbr17bingo, City politics, Cover is important, Dark times, Michael Harvey, Michael Kelly PI series, Serial Killer and worse ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Major Tom? Can You Hear Me?

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

September 10, 2025 by elderberrywine Leave a Comment

cbr17 bingo Migrant   Like the title says, an archive, a family one, loaded into boxes and carried across country from New York to Arizona.  The family is a hybrid one – the husband with his son and the wife with her daughter, yet the two children are a team.  Good thing they have each other to rely on.  The parents met as part of a project to document the soundscape of New York City, but when the wife meets the mother of a classmate […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Are we there yet, Boxes of stuff, cbr17 bingo, Child migrants, Melded family, road trip, Southwest vsions, Valeria Luiselli

elderberrywine's CBR17 Review No:48 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Are we there yet, Boxes of stuff, cbr17 bingo, Child migrants, Melded family, road trip, Southwest vsions, Valeria Luiselli ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Not Exactly Mexican Gothic, But Close Enough

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

September 9, 2025 by elderberrywine Leave a Comment

cbr17bingo Border Now this was an interesting one.  Mexican Gothic is my jam, and I thought that this would be along that vein, but it turned out to be definitely its own thing – an intriguing cross between fictionalized family lore and magical realism.  And when I looked up the translation of Part Two – El Tragabalas, I discover that it is the book’s title in Spanish, but it is also the title of a fairly well known Mexican movie from the mid-60s, and the […]

Filed Under: Featured, Fiction, History, Horror, Western Tagged With: cbr17bingo, Drought and hard times, Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Family history sorta, magical realism, Mexican movie star, Mexico and Texas in the 1890s and the 1960s, Mysterious grotty book, Not all characters are human, Texas rangers never give up even when it makes no sense, Violent and gory

elderberrywine's CBR17 Review No:42 · Genres: Featured, Fiction, History, Horror, Western · Tags: cbr17bingo, Drought and hard times, Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Family history sorta, magical realism, Mexican movie star, Mexico and Texas in the 1890s and the 1960s, Mysterious grotty book, Not all characters are human, Texas rangers never give up even when it makes no sense, Violent and gory ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Mooses? Meese? Why No Plural?

Massacre Pond by Paul Doiron

August 28, 2025 by elderberrywine 2 Comments

cbr17bingo Favorite Well, there is a massacre of sorts involved here, but Massacre Pond is identified as being somewhere else than this locale, and isn’t really involved with this story.  Makes you wonder who chooses a title, and I suspect in this case, it wasn’t Doiron. Anyhoo, the massacre victims consist of ten moose.  All shot point blank on a game refuge, and clearly not for the meat.  Someone (make that two someones) are clearly trying to send a message.  There is a season for […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Mystery Tagged With: But of course there is a murder or two, cbr17 bingo, Eastern Maine where no one is looking to add a National Park thank you very much, Life of a game warden with extraordinary bad luck, Mike might stick around this time, Paul Doiron, The rich always think they can have it their way

elderberrywine's CBR17 Review No:47 · Genres: Fiction, Mystery · Tags: But of course there is a murder or two, cbr17 bingo, Eastern Maine where no one is looking to add a National Park thank you very much, Life of a game warden with extraordinary bad luck, Mike might stick around this time, Paul Doiron, The rich always think they can have it their way ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

“Saul of my pody, put you are wrang there my friend. It is your fat Englishmen that eat up our Scots cattle, puir things.” Got that?

Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott

August 25, 2025 by elderberrywine Leave a Comment

cbr17bingo Culture Rather an odd duck, this one.  Some legal jibber-jabber in the frontpiece seems to indicate that this book was not intended to be sold in the US, yet I bought it at the UCLA bookstore.  Hmm.  Anyway. First, let me digress.  I grew up in a small town with a small library, and there really was no other source of books for me other than that, and my Mom’s Book-of-the-Month Club, when she could afford it.  So imagine my thrill, when I started […]

Filed Under: Fiction, History, Romance, Short Stories Tagged With: By the guy who wrote Ivanhoe, cbr17bingo, English as a second language but actually still English, Part of the Waverly novels series, Scottish/British classic, Sometimes a guy just needs a little extra cash you know, Stories within stories, Walter Scott

elderberrywine's CBR17 Review No:46 · Genres: Fiction, History, Romance, Short Stories · Tags: By the guy who wrote Ivanhoe, cbr17bingo, English as a second language but actually still English, Part of the Waverly novels series, Scottish/British classic, Sometimes a guy just needs a little extra cash you know, Stories within stories, Walter Scott ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Yeah no, Just no.

The Suicides by Antonio di Benedetto

August 21, 2025 by elderberrywine Leave a Comment

  cbr17bingo white Somewhere, while I was reading this, I encountered a review of this book that praised it for its ironic lightheartedness.  Say what?  Oh hell no. The author is an Argentinian who was imprisoned and tortured during the military dictatorship of the 1970s.  This book, written in 1969, a product of a time when Argentinian citizens were being disappeared off the streets and dropped out of planes (disturbingly familiar.)  The narrator, a reporter, has been assigned the task of writing about three unrelated […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: 1970s Argentima, Antonio Di Benedetto, cbr17bingo, Don't think I am getting the point, I don't think newspapers work this way, Not a good time, Why am I reading this?

elderberrywine's CBR17 Review No:45 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: 1970s Argentima, Antonio Di Benedetto, cbr17bingo, Don't think I am getting the point, I don't think newspapers work this way, Not a good time, Why am I reading this? ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments
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