Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About reginadelmar

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Inspired to climb back into CBR after a few year hiatus. Promise to quit any book that doesn't hold my attention after the first 50 pages. Life is too short. she/her

reginadelmar's Reviews:

Not a Meal to Remember

Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg

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Reading this book was a bit like saving up to go to a really nice restaurant only to have the  the food be overpriced and underwhelming. The book uses the relationship between Totenberg and Ginsburg as the hook to get you to buy/read the book. The book is really the autobiography of Nina Totenberg, but her approach is to weave her career and personal life together with Ginsburg’s. The technique doesn’t work. Totenberg is too deferential to Ginsburg to say anything other than Ruth was […]

In Money We Trust

Trust by Hernan Diaz

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A friend texted me about Trust, she wanted me to read it so we could discuss it.  She dropped it off and away I went. The title Trust is a good one, because the word can be used in so many ways. The story is about a tycoon and his wife in the early 20th century. There are “trusts” in the context of money making, Wall Street, sketchy financial dealings and philanthropy. The book is also dealing with the idea of whom do we trust? […]

The Illusions we create aren’t all Magic

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

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This is one of Ann Patchett’s earlier novels. The book begins with Sabine holding onto Parsifal, toe. Parsifal has just had an aneurysm.  Born in Connecticut, his family died in a car crash when he was young. Parsifal was a successful rug merchant and a part-time magician Sabine  was his assistant for about 20 years. She was in love with him, but he was gay. Phan, his partner, and Sabine lived together in Los Angeles. Phan died of AIDS, after Phan’s death, Parsifal was diagnosed […]

But Do Say Something of the Cat

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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To Say Nothing of the Dog wasn’t sitting on my shelf at home, but was tucked away in a used book store in Loreto, Mexico. I had seen the book title years ago, once confusing it with Let’s Not go to the Dogs Tonight (these books have nothing in common other than Dog in the title) and for a few pesos was willing to give it a go.  The story is intentionally silly, the Coventry Cathedral is being rebuilt in Oxford in the future. The […]

Smokey the Bear was Wrong

The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

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The Great Fire of 1910 burned 3 million acres in Western Montana, Northern Idaho, parts of Washington and British Columbia. The fire burned in  newly created national forests including the Bitterrroot, Coeur d’Alene, Kootenai and Lolo. Timothy Egan tells the story of the fire and the larger story of the creation of public lands through the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt, forester Gifford Pinchot and John Muir. The politics of resource conservation and the role of fire are certainly relevant now, particularly with the additional complexities […]

Historical Fiction Doesn’t Always Work

Lilliam Boxfish Takes A Walk by Kathleen Rooney

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According to the author this story was inspired by the life of Margaret Fishback. She was the  highest paid female copywriter in the world during the 1930s while working for R.H. Macy’s. She was also a published poet. The poetry included in the book was written by Fishback. All of this seemed like a great set up for a novel, and yet, for me it didn’t quite work. The structure of the novel centers around New Years Eve 1984, when Lillian Boxfish is 85 years […]



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