Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Zirza

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I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with reading stuff and writing about it. I try to keep the bitchiness to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. In my spare time I enjoy complaining about the weather and sleeping. I lack the attention span for good books and the tolerance for bad ones. I am stuck in literary purgatory. Hey, at least it's warm here.

Zirza's Reviews:

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

The Lock-Up by John Banville

Alles Wat er Was by Hanna Bervoets

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Two relatively short, easy reads this week, neither of them terribly cheerful! The Lock-Up (John Banville) *** 1950s Dublin. A young woman is discovered in a rented garage, sitting in her car with the windows closed and a hose connecting the exhaust to the interior. The police are quick to call it suicide, though no note is found. But pathologist Quirke, still in mourning over the loss of his beloved wife, soon discovers that the young woman was probably sedated before being placed inside the […]

Autumnal Reading

1979 by Val McDermid

The Survivors by Jane Harper

De Metsiers by Hugo Claus

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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After not having read much for a couple of weeks (work has been hell), I once again found myself in a place with terrible internet connectivity and a pile of books. Worse things have happened, particularly because the books I ended up selecting all turned out to be pretty dang good. 1979 (Val McDermid) **** Allie Burns is a woman in a man’s world. An Oxbridge graduate, she works as a journalist for a small Scottish newspaper. She hopes to make it big but so […]

Quick Thinking (Also: yay, full cannonball!)

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

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River Cartwright is an MI5 prodigy; his grandfather was a famed higher-up in the organisation and he’s set to follow in the man’s footsteps. He’s nearly done with his training when his final exercise goes drastically wrong and before long, he is banished to Slough House, an MI5 outpost where those who have fallen into disgrace are sent. It’s unclear what the Slow Horses, as Slough House’s employees are known, do all day, except that it is tedious and senseless work. But then a young […]

Half-Baked Alaska

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

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Thirteen year old Leni doesn’t have the most stable of backgrounds. Her mother, who had her at age fifteen, does the best she can. Her father is a Vietnam vet who spent years in captivity and is drowning his PTSD in alcohol and harebrained get-rich-quick schemes that are invariably abandoned halfway through. It’s the 1970s; the Flower Power movement is in the last of its heyday when Leni’s father receives a letter from the father of a fallen comrade that he’ll give him his son’s […]

I’m pretty sure Jane Austen would’ve mocked this book relentlessly. 

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

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1840s England. Cassandra Austen, professional spinster and sister-of, arrives at the home of a relative who has just lost her father, and because said father was a parson, she is forced to vacate the house in which she’s been living to make room for the new guy. The relative, Eliza, is not thrilled to see Cassandra, but Cassandra doesn’t care: her sole mission is to find the letters that her sister Jane once sent, to protect her reputation and keep her secrets. **Spoilers herein** Spoiler […]

Sug y Saeson

The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh

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Mirror Lake is a picturesque place that lies on the border between Wales and England. Famed Welsh singer Rhys Lloyd – was there ever a more Welsh name? – has joined hands with investor Jonty to build a luxury development on the English side. Five tall, luxurious lodges rise up from the shore, irking the townspeople of Cwm Coed, which lies on the Welsh side. The development’s inhabitants are both implausibly wealthy as well as English; two good reasons to hate them. To try and […]



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