Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Even Better the 3rd Time Around

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

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What a difference time can make when re-reading books! The first time I read The Fellowship of the Ring, I was an undergrad and felt that about the first 100 pages was a slog. The second time (I don’t recall when that was), I was prepared for the slog and knew I’d enjoy the rest of the novel, minus what I felt was a rather pointless section with Tom Bombadil. But this time was different. It’s been several years since I last read it, and […]

“There is more history in a bowl of pasta than in the Colosseum”

Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal by Andreas Viestad

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I love Italian food (well, I am Italian).  I love history. I loved visiting Rome. Put that all together and you get Dinner in Rome – A history of the world in one meal by Andreas Vestad. This book was originally published in Vestad’s native language, Norwegian, but I am glad somebody thought it worthy of releasing in English in the US. The premise is very simple. Vestad sits down to a meal at his favorite restaurant in Rome. As he eats, he explores the […]

“They lead ‘still’ lives, waiting.”

Still Life by Louise Penny

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My husband and I started watching the Three Pines series on Amazon Prime, which was enjoyable; Chief Inspector Gamache, played by Alfred Molina, is a delight of eyebrows. The television series reminded me that I likely hadn’t read Ms. Penny’s earlier works though I have picked up the occasional book in an airport bookstore but have moved haphazardly through the series; thus, I decided to start at the first book. Sill Life draws Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec to the delightfully bucolic […]

The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

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Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s powerful, 1962 non-fiction book documenting the damage caused by widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides, has been on my TBR for a long time. I considered it something I simply had to read if I was going to continue to claim to be a science lover and environmentalist. I thought this would mostly be review for me since I’m already aware of the harm that DDT has caused. For one thing, I’m involved with an organization that supports conservation efforts around […]

How does your island grow?

Stranded!: A Mostly True Story from Iceland by ÆVar þÓr Benediktsson

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CBR15Passport other country (Iceland) What would you do if you were stranded on a brand new, active volcano?  Well, I do not know about you, but I do not think I would fall asleep like the two characters of ÆVar þÓr Benediktsson’s book, Stranded!: A Mostly True Story from Iceland did. You see, back in the mid-to-late 1960s a volcano was created off the coast of Iceland. This brand-new island was really hot stuff (literally)! It was still flowing molten lava to the point if you […]

Two Households, Both Alike in Dignity

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

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The last book I reviewed for this site was Janice Hallett’s The Appeal, in which most of the characters were involved with an amateur production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Though it was clearly tangential to the plot and unnecessary to parse the mystery, I was still a tad embarrassed to be unfamiliar with the play. So I decided to rectify that. Miller’s play tells the story of two families, the Kellers and the Deevers, who used to be next-door neighbors. The fathers were […]



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