Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About GentleRain

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Your jack of all trades eccentric. Knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little. Tends to mainly read non-fiction (history, true crime, old gossip, etc), SF/F, horror, graphic novels, "genre" books. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: GentleRain's Quick Questions interview.)

GentleRain's Reviews:

“…he was one of the happiest men who had ever lived — happy in his family, his home, his books, his work, his garden, his travels, and the world of nature and people around him.”

Harold Nicolson: A Biography (Volume II: 1930-1968) by James Lees-Milne

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This second volume of James Lees-Milne’s biography of Harold Nicolson covers 1930-1968. With the large amount of world and personal history that this book covers, JLM continues to masterfully shepherd the reader through Nicolson’s fascinating life. I enjoyed this volume more than the first one (although they are both excellent) mainly because with him leaving the Foreign Office, the foreign policy explanations die down a bit and I am more well versed in the history of this era. While the Paris Conference and the Lausanne […]

“Dex drew one shaky breath, then walked away, each step sure and steady.

Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers

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I read an article recently about the current state of science fiction where the thesis was basically that the field doesn’t have a clear vision of the future anymore and isn’t providing the service that it used to to the culture at large. I have qualms about this point of view because I’m a pretty optimistic person and the amount of books being published under the umbrella of science fiction make it hard for me to make a coherent argument that covers all of them […]

“One of Harold Nicolson’s many endearing traits was to invent occasions brought about by some preposterous and improbable action on his part.”

Harold Nicolson: A Biography (Volume I: 1886-1929) by James Lees-Milne

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One of my continued passions is Edwardian era history and as I keep reading more books about it, some people pop up over and over again until finally I either buy a biography or their letters and diaries to figure out what they were up to. Harold Nicolson is one of those people who show up in every book you will read about the 1900s through to the 1960s, as he was involved in huge amounts of historical events and had a very busy social […]

“Baba will realize what he’s missing, and he’ll come home so we can be a normal, happy family again.”

How To Draw A Secret by Cindy Chang

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Well, my New Year’s resolution to keep up with my book reviews has not gone amazingly the first half of the year, but there’s always time to refocus so I’m trying to get back into it. Fortunately this summer of grad school classes hasn’t been as overwhelming as last year, so I have been able to do some reading for fun and have some books to review. I even have had the time to go to the local bookstore twice, which is pretty astonishing versus […]

“Did I ever imagine how things were going to turn out? No, thank God. Why thank God? Had it been that bad? No, of course not. Only quite, quite different. Just as well one didn’t know in advance.”

Change Lobsters and Dance by Lilli Palmer

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I had no recollection of why I purchased this book until about halfway through when David (Edward VIII) and Wallis showed up. Then I realized this must have been cited in some biography I read about him, Wallis, or Jimmy Donahue (as Jimmy is also in this book, and I remember the disastrous dinner party described here, where he jumps off the yacht twice and humilates them in front of Greta Garbo). But putting that whole grim group aside, this was a lovely surprise to […]

“All I wanted was stability. All I wanted was normalcy. All I wanted was for things to remain the same. But nothing ever stayed the same.”

Knot That Simple by Amy Oliveira

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Emmalita’s review piqued my interest in Knot That Simple so I popped over and picked it up. It’s a very fast read (126 pages, apparently, although on the online Kindle reader it all melds into a pleasant blur). I got through it in short chunks in an afternoon whenever I needed a break from writing a paper. I was on Livejournal when omegaverse was created and I do like it although I only really ever read it in gay fanfiction, so straight omegaverse was out […]



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