Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About TheShitWizard

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Drinking tea, reading books, petting cats. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: TheShitWizard's Quick Questions interview.)

TheShitWizard's Reviews:

If you knew how your actions affected others, would you change them?

An Inspector Calls and Other Plays by JB Priestley

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An Inspector Calls and Other Plays contains, as you might have guessed, An Inspector Calls as well as Time and the Conways, I Have Been Here Before, and the Linden Tree. Of the collection, An Inspector Calls stands head and shoulders above the rest but they are all of a high standard. Time and the Conways and I Have Been Here Before both deal with time, fate and free will, but of the two I definitely enjoyed the latter the most. The former sees us […]

“First I’m going to have a little drinkie, and then I’m going to execute the whole bally lot of you.”

Dangerous Days in Elizabethan England by Terry Deary

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The third book in Deary’s Dangerous Days series takes a quick jaunt around the Elizabethan era, peeking behind the jewelled skirts of the Queen to see the smallpox scars and filth-encrusted streets underneath. Given what a huge influence Elizabeth’s family and upbringing would have had on her psychology, the first half of the book focuses on them from her birth on – her psychopath father declaring her a bastard and having her mother beheaded, her sickly brother dying soon into his rule, her bloodthirsty sister […]

In a gadda da vida, baby

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

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A non fiction book that reads partly like a travelogue and partly like a novel, it’s easy to see why Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has become known as a true crime classic. I devoured this almost whole, and even managed to forget that it was about a crime until I got half way through and the deed occurred, immersed as I was in getting to know Savannah’s society. Author John Berendt had visited Savannah and fallen in love, and so decided […]

Psycho killer, qu’est que c’est?

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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I’ve been eyeing this one jealously every time I see it perched on my mum’s armchair, which she thankfully noticed and so passed it on as soon as she finished. This didn’t take long – it’s a super quick read which I nailed in one morning in bed, and I could have easily read much more of it. Korede has spent her life protecting her little sister. Beautiful and charming, Ayoola needed a lot of protection when younger – from their abusive father and from […]

There are better things to rebel against, Nate

Rebel by Bernard Cornwell

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Pressed upon me by a colleague, it took me a few weeks to really get into Rebel in which we meet young Nathaniel Starbuck, a Bostonite who’s fled to the South to escape the wrath of his abolitionist preacher father who is most upset that Nate has stolen a bunch of money for and then been abandoned by a floozy. Narrowly avoiding being tarred by an angry Southern mob thanks to a timely rescue by his friend’s father and wealthy landowner Washington Falcouner, Nate finds […]

Murder and medical procedures most horrid

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

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Set in 1840s Edinburgh, The Way of All Flesh is a diverting tale of murder as well as a horrifying eye opener on the obstetrics of the time that made me wonder more than once how enough women have ever survived childbirth to have continued the human race. Will Raven has accrued more than just an education whilst studying to become a doctor. Having become friendly with a sex worker, Evie, Raven has borrowed heavily for some ne’erdowells to help her out of a situation, […]



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