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:

“No one survives a war’s front lines without ghosts clinging to them.”

Angels of the Pacific by Elise Hooper

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CBR 15 Bingo – Hold Steady: To survive the war, Tess and Flor have to make a stand and hold steady in their efforts to undermine the Japanese occupiers. After Japan invades and occupies the Philippines during WW2, American nurse Tess and Filipino university student Flor must do whatever they can to survive and help those around them. In my ongoing quest to find WW2 historical novels which don’t simply rehash the experience of the London Blitz or the French resistance, I have looked to the […]

Violating the Status Quo

Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema by Anne Helen Petersen

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CBR 15 Bingo – Dwelling: All the people discussed in this book work and live in Hollywood – both town and concept – which for better or for worse casts a long shadow across their lives. Hollywood has always banked on its stars and their stories as a promotional tool, so heavily that when actors openly diverge from their public personas it often causes backlash among the public. Especially in the first half-century of Hollywood, stars were marketed with particular stories and personas, often as […]

That Feeling When Your Dog Retrieves a Dismembered Leg

Flight Risk by Cherie Priest

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CBR 15 Bingo – North America: This book is set in rainy Seattle, Washington, and we see plenty of the splendor of its nature as well. Leda, a travel agent and part-time psychic, gets swept up in the case of a dual disappearance when a couple is reported missing in seemingly unrelated circumstances. This is the second book in The Booking Agents series, which follows Leda and a skeptical police detective, Grady, as they solve confounding crimes. I read the first book a few years […]

Life and Death in the Asylum

Broadmoor Inmates by Nicola Sly

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CBR 15 Bingo – Violence: On their path to the asylum, nearly all of the people profiled in this book committed violence to others, and many to themselves as well. Broadmoor is a well-known psychiatric hospital that originally opened in 1863, but until the 1950s or so, the “criminally insane” people sent there were mostly there for confinement rather than effective treatment. I’ve always enjoyed true crime, but having also recently become intrigued by attitudes toward mental illness throughout history, I was excited to have this […]

Where the Animals Have Better Manners

Riders by Jilly Cooper

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CBR15 Bingo – Sex: What would a bonkbuster be without sex? And here it drives much of the action and drama of the book as well. Jake Lovell and Rupert Campbell-Black were born to very different circumstances which have made them very different men, but they both have the same goal – to rise to the top of the spectacular, high-octane world of… show jumping. As I was embarking on an international trip with limited internet access, I thought it would be prudent to stock up […]

She’s a Queen, He’s Just an Asshole

Second Chance with His Viking Wife by Sarah Rodi

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CBR15 Bingo – Europe: This book is set in Saxon England, and additionally includes Norse characters who immigrated there from Greenland. Teon hasn’t seen his wife Revna in years, when they were forced to wed to prevent a war. He hates Vikings, her father especially, and yet he can’t help but be drawn to her. I picked up this book because I’m trying to read more historical romance from different settings, and I don’t recall having read a Viking romance before, especially one it is the […]



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