Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Wanderlustful

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Lawyer by day, voracious reader by night. So many books, so little time!

Wanderlustful's Reviews:

Seemed like a good idea in 2005

Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi global marketing and I was gifted/ asked to read his book as a welcome/guide to my new job in tourism marketing. The basic thesis is that marketing needs to move beyond ‘trusted brands’ to ‘loved brands’, or ‘lovemarks’, that inspire feelings and an emotional bond in the consumer/audience. To get to this lovemark space, a company needs to build off of the earlier pillars that let brands become trusted (consistent, quality product) with somewhat amorphous additional […]

Some Wellness Resort porn for a year of no travel

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

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Nine Perfect Strangers is a relatively recent (2018) Liane Moriarty novel. A high powered city career woman, Masha, has a heart attack and is born anew- she loses weight, finds new purpose and opens a small wellness resort in the countryside. The novel follows the arrival of 9 guests who will be staying for a week, all with slightly different backgrounds and goals for the week- there is a couple with marital problems (Ben and Jessica), a writer suffering a crisis of career and life […]

Murder goes on vacation

The Murder Stone by Louise Penny

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Armand Gamache, the dapper detective from la belle province’s Surety de Quebec, is back in this fourth installment in Louise Penny’s series. This time Gamache is not in Three Pines, the idyllic but murder-y town in Quebec’s eastern townships, but Manoir Bellechasse, a lakeside hotel resort the next valley over. It is the height of summer and Armand and his wife, Reine-Marie, are celebrating their anniversary the same way they do every year, at the Manoir. The resort’s other guests are the Finneys, a snooty […]

I know its bad but I liked it anyway

From Blood and Ash by Jennifer Armentrout

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Fantasy is not my usual go-to, but it is one of my good girlfriend’s go-tos, so I usually rely on her recommendations, of this was one. It is not a short book (are any fantasy novels?) and initially had that ‘self-published fantasy’ feel. Once I was deeper in, however, man! I read this book on the bike at the gym, I stayed up late to finish chapters, I used this book as a reward was how into it I was. And at the same time […]

Speaking a universal language

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

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Thammavongsa is a Laotian-Canadian writer and her collection of short stories focus on Laotian immigrants and their children in ways poignant, funny and heartbreaking. Her characters tend to be lower class, aspiring to be middle-class, striving for a better life. For the most part, Thammavongsa isn’t focused directly on the aspiring part, but the small interactions, misinterpretations and obsessions that her characters experience. Her stories really draw on threads of race, class and gender. There are 14 short stories in the collection, and as with […]

Jane Eyre meets H.P. Lovecraft

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I am a big fan of gothic fiction reinterpreted in postcolonial settings, so this was right up my alley.  Moreno-Garcia’s novel follows Noemi Taboada, an upper class university student in 1950s Mexico City. When her father receives a strange letter from Noemi’s cousin, Catalina, Noemi goes to visit Catalina in the remote mining town where she lives with her husband Virgil’s family. Granted limited access to her cousin, who is said to be ‘recovering’, Noemi spends a growing amount of time with Virgil’s family, including […]



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