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:

This Week, In Irish Trauma Porn…

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The Gathering by Anne Enright

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To be fair, only half of this is Catholic trauma porn. One may wonder why Ireland, of all places, has spawned such a fabled literary heritage. Personally I think it’s their sly sense of humour, finely tuned after years of British occupation. Perhaps it’s the potatoes. Both of these books abundantly feature potatoes.  Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan) *** Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a small town in Ireland in 1986. It’s nearly Christmas; the busiest time of the year for him. […]

The past and the present walk into a bar

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

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Slough House: a grimy station across from London’s Barbican Estate, tucked away above a Chinese restaurant that’s perpetually closed. It’s where MI5-rejects are sent in the hopes that they will quit, thus saving the service the headache of firing them. Against all odds, it has been drafted in protecting a visiting Russian oligarch with whom the British government is interested in striking a deal, or at least set up some sort of connection the way governments do. Two Slow Horses are ordered to babysit, though […]

This week, in ‘Men Doing Stupid Shit’…

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes

10 Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall

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Two books this week, both about men who do things they either haven’t thought through, or that they should maybe stop thinking about. altogether.  Before She Met Me (Julian Barnes) *** Graham is an academic and teaches history at university. He’s left his shrewish wife Barbara for Ann, a former b-list actress, and he is very happy with her until the day when he accidentally sees his wife in a dumb b-movie. In it, Ann is seen in bed with another actor. Graham’s mind latches […]

I Took The Road Less Travelled and Boy Did I Regret It

Het Stravinskyspel by Arthur Japin

Maretak by Hilde Veeren

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This Cannonball Read is largely useless: neither of these books have been translated into English and since most of you fine folk don’t speak Dutch, there’s not really any chance for you to read them. Not that there’s much reason you should. Anyway, here’s my foray into Kanonskogel Lezen – the Dutch Edition.  First up is Arthur Japin’s Het Stravinskyspel (The Stravinsky Game). In it, we meet Cody, a boy on the cusp of adulthood. Cody lives in LA and has been moderately successful as […]

Let the Right One In

The Outsider by Stephen King

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A young boy is found violated and viciously murdered in a small town in the American heartland. Police inspector Ralph Anderson soon finds his prime suspect: baseball trainer Terry Maitland has been seen by multiple witnesses, his clothes covered in blood. His fingerprints are all over the place. Ralph, sure he has the right man, goes in to arrest Terry in front of the entire town. The only problem is that Terry seems to have an iron-clad alibi. So why was he in two places […]

Twist and Shout

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

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Rowan works at a London daycare with the suitably horrible name Little Nippers. Though she likes the children, she dislikes her coworkers and the put-upon, complaining parents that she has to deal with. She lives in a cramped, run-down apartment, which she shares with a coworker who is now on Sabbatical. So when she finds a job ad for a live-in nanny on a country estate in the Scottish Highlands, she does whatever she can to get the job. It doesn’t go well; the book […]



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