Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Nart

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Nart is an avid romance reader who dabbles in other stuff when she has the spoons. When she’s not reading she’s a bureaucrat both professionally and as an activist because she’s a masochist. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Nart's Quick Questions interview.)

Nart's Reviews:

“Women were to stay out of it. Whatever *it* was.”

My Inconvenient Duke by Loretta Chase

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The third in Chase’s Difficult Dukes series. This book is so quintessentially Chase that if you fed it to AI (and someone probably has), it could probably produce a roughly believable original story just based on this book. Plot: Lady Alice is the sister of the Duke of Ripley, which readers may recall from A Duke in Shining Armor. Ripley’s recklessness has now been tamed by an intelligent, headstrong woman, but this was not always the case. At one point, Alice felt that Ripley would […]

Men are naturally hot and dry and women are naturally cold and damp. Guess which is good?

The Once and Future Sex by Eleanor Janega

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Accessibly written history on how medieval society viewed women and how they viewed themselves. Spoiler alert – the “natural” woman is straight up the opposite of what society thinks is “natural” now. I’ve recently fallen down a Youtube rabbit hole on History Hit. I am finding it somewhat reassuring to learn about other times in history that have dealt with seemingly insurmountable issues that were, eventually, surmounted. So when I learned that one of their historians wrote the history of medieval women? Girl, I ran […]

“I’m sorry to say that Brotheron eldest sons are always named Chauncey.”

The Ruin of a Rogue by Miranda Neville

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Plot: Anne is the daughter of a Duke, and as such, was Born To Greatness. Or at least, to marry into it. To ensure this, she is kept sequestered from the world right up until it’s time to get into the marriage mart. Despite her imposed innocence, Anne is no fool, and quickly realizes that her appeal starts and ends with her dowry. Anne goes from innocent to jaded real quick, but her lack of experience with clever frauds means that when Marcus Lithgow, who […]

“Peter tried to think of a remark less terrifying than ‘have you thought of selling your teeth?'”

Ne'er Duke Well by Alexandra Vashti

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Plot: Peter grew up in the southern US, having been abandoned by his conman of a father. By a fluke of circumstance, he has found himself with a Dukedom and two half-siblings presently being gently neglected by an elderly relative. Immediately, he knew he wanted to use his newfound power to advance the cause of emancipation and get custody of his brother and sister. The problem is that these two goals are in a bit of conflict, as one is viewed as radical, and the […]

“Captain Kirk would have thought of something by now, I’m sure, but I have no red-shirted confederates to feed to it.”

Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Being an astronaut – it isn’t all tiny balls of ice cream and zero gravity bouncing. Plot: Gary has wanted to be an astronaut all his life. And not only did he become an astronaut, his first trip was to be part of a team investigating potential evidence of alien life. This is the stuff dreams are made of. Only that dream turned into a nightmare as they arrived and disaster starts taking them out. Gary is now alone, with no provision, and no sense […]

A self help health book that isn’t terrible?

Outlive by Peter Attia

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I really wanted to hate this book. I picked it up exclusively to critique it from an informed perspective. I eat my words (and a high protein diet). The fact that Dr. Attia is in fact a doctor means little to me, because so is Dr. Oz. Working in a professional area with niche specializations has inoculated me from taking the word of a generalist in an area where specialization exists. Going into this book, I expected broad, decisive conclusions with little to no real […]



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