Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Pooja

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Ardent reader of pretty much anything, including the backs of shampoo bottles. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Pooja's Quick Questions interview.)

Pooja's Reviews:

The Fatal Flaw of a Single Drop

Fauna by Denise Robins

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Fauna is stolen away from her village in Africa and enslaved at twelve – but her mixed blood offers her a greater chance of a happy life in England, even though it comes with its own specific dangers too. This is a bit of a hodgepodge review, because this is the omnibus edition of a trio of books following Fauna and her descendants. Originally published in the 1950s, the books have a for-their-time sympathetic treatment of the mixed-race Fauna and her descendants, even if that […]

The Other Empresses

The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe by Nancy Goldstone

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While Victoria of Great Britain is the most well-known of the empresses who reigned in Europe in the 19th century, she is by no means the only one. While Eugenie of France and Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary did not rule in their own right, they left their own marks on the lands and people over which they reigned too. I read omnivorously, but sometimes one wants to come back to the basics, and for me books about royalty count among the basics. I’m quite familiar with […]

“For four years we spied and we worked damn hard and we saved people’s lives and we made a difference and nobody cared too much that we were women. And then it all ended.”

The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre by Natasha Lester

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Ex-OSS agent Alix St. Pierre seeks a fresh start in Paris as the PR agent for the freshly established House of Dior, but her actions and enemies from during the war continue to dog her steps. This was the oldest NetGalley ARC on my shelf, so it’s with a real sense of satisfaction that I’m crossing it off the list. And it was fun to see yet another fresh perspective on World War Two, that of a female OSS agent, and better yet to see […]

You’re Watching Disney Channel

Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel's Tween Empire by Ashley Spencer

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Disney Channel’s children’s TV shows were a major cultural touchpoint during the 2000s, with hit TV shows like Hannah Montana and movies like High School Musical, which is all the more impressive considering that it was practically built from the ground up starting in the late 1990s. It’s hard to overstate the ubiquity of the Disney Channel’s children shows during the 2000s. I never watched these shows because my parents were exceeding suspicious of non-cartoon children’s entertainment when I was a child (I watched High School Musical for […]

“The hearts of men are alike wherever you go. The rest is scenery.”

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

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In the midst of the Peloponnesian War, more than 7000 Athenian prisoners of war are left to rot in Syracuse’s quarries – except a select few whom unemployed Syracusan potters Lampo and Gelon decide will be perfect to mount a pair of plays by the great tragic playwright Euripides. You might have to reread that premise. It’s a pretty whacky one, though some mild trawling of Wikipedia later revealed to me that allegedly some Athenian prisoners in Sicily did buy their freedom by reciting Euripides […]

“I am forty four and I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

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When Sally catapults to national attention for putting her adoptive father’s body out with the trash, little does she know that this is not the first time she’s been in the headlines. I don’t read a lot of suspense, but after seeing this book all over my Goodreads feed the last couple of years I was sufficiently intrigued. That’s a pretty startling image to start off with, one’s father in the trash! Nugent creates a fascinating dual character study following Sally and Peter, and I […]



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