Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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“The economy’s in ruins, no one’s got a job, and we just don’t care, it’s bliss.”

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

June 30, 2025 by Zirza 1 Comment

It’s 1983. Thatcher is at No. 10 and Nick Guest, age 21, has just graduated from Oxford University. He finds himself as a lodger at the house of a college friend, Toby, whose father Gerald Fedden has been elected as a promising new conservative MP. Nick, who comes from a solidly middle class background, finds himself a loose thread intricately woven into the upper class social fabric of the Freddens. Nick has the wrong background and the wrong predilections, and he knows it doesn’t take […]

Filed Under: Featured, Fiction Tagged With: Alan Hollinghurst, booker prize winner, LGBT fiction, literary fiction, London, the line of beauty

Zirza's CBR17 Review No:34 · Genres: Featured, Fiction · Tags: Alan Hollinghurst, booker prize winner, LGBT fiction, literary fiction, London, the line of beauty ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment

bit of an omnibus for the year end

Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow, Ann Friedman

December 31, 2024 by wicherwill Leave a Comment

Buried Deep and Other Stories (⭐⭐⭐⭐ but for the ones I read) Did I get this only to re-visit the world of Temeraire? You bet! I felt, I think like many people, that Novik got a bit fed up of her Dragon + Napoleonic Wars world by the end, with the whimsy and joy taken over by staid descriptions of military marches and food depots. This was a way to return to the original joy, especially since one of the retellings was of Pride and […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Non-Fiction Tagged With: Alan Hollinghurst, Aminatou Sow, Ann Friedman, anne of green gables, Holly Gramazio, L.M. Montgomery, Naomi novik

wicherwill's CBR16 Review No:66 · Genres: Fiction, Non-Fiction · Tags: Alan Hollinghurst, Aminatou Sow, Ann Friedman, anne of green gables, Holly Gramazio, L.M. Montgomery, Naomi novik ·
· 0 Comments

He was so unknown, he was still all possibility, unopened cupboards and drawers

The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst

March 24, 2019 by Dusty Highway Leave a Comment

I had a discussion with Classic a few weeks ago in the comments section of her review for The Paying Guests, which she said started off very slowly. At the time, I happened to be about 100 pages into Alan Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star, and I’d been worrying about how slowly it was moving until I thought back to the same time last year when I read his most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, which didn’t really click for me until the last 50 pages. […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Alan Hollinghurst, Booker shortlist, cbr11, gay author, gay fiction, gay Lolita, lgbt, literary fiction, slow burn, The Folding Star, unreliable narrator

Dusty Highway's CBR11 Review No:17 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Alan Hollinghurst, Booker shortlist, cbr11, gay author, gay fiction, gay Lolita, lgbt, literary fiction, slow burn, The Folding Star, unreliable narrator ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Beauty, Sex, Drugs, and Scandal

November 12, 2018 by Lisa Bee Leave a Comment

I’ve lost track of how many people I have told about my notable experience with sleep paralysis last year, which included a very strange dream with Dan Stevens that was related to said experience with sleep paralysis. However, this led me to watching a LOT of Dan Stevens content in the months that followed. This has nothing to do with this novel, except for the fact that upon referencing some info for my review, I find that there was a miniseries adaptation of the book […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Alan Hollinghurst, Award Winner, cbr10bingo

Lisa Bee's CBR10 Review No:56 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Alan Hollinghurst, Award Winner, cbr10bingo ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

27: The Sparsholt Affair

April 1, 2018 by bonnie Leave a Comment

You know how travelling forces you to make decisions about books? I had a terrible dilemma this last week. I’d been steadily reading and enjoying Alan Hollinghurst’s newest novel, The Sparsholt Affair, when we were packing to leave for Florida for four days. I had twenty pages left as of an hour before our Lyft picked us up. And I had to leave the book behind. It was agony. Thankfully, I got to finish it when we returned home on Friday. And what a worthwhile […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Alan Hollinghurst, bonnie

bonnie's CBR10 Review No:27 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Alan Hollinghurst, bonnie ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Haunted by the ghosts of the living

March 24, 2018 by Dusty Highway Leave a Comment

I’m having a hard time writing a review for Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair. It’s a book that defies easy summarization; even the cover synopsis doesn’t really describe the book I read and probably did more harm than good to my understanding. The story is told in five sections. The first takes place at Oxford during the early 1940’s, with the Blitz in full swing. Two of the characters have a brief affair, giving the book’s title its first meaning. The second section follows one […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: #CBR10, Alan Hollinghurst, Fiction, lgbt, The Sparsholt Affair

Dusty Highway's CBR10 Review No:16 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: #CBR10, Alan Hollinghurst, Fiction, lgbt, The Sparsholt Affair ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments
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