Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

‘And blue anemone for you, and the excitement and anticipation I feel when I think of our lives together.’

A Proposal in Provence by Donna Alward

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Anemone didn’t find out that she was the illegitimate child of the already married Lord Pemberton until after both her parents had passed away. Hoping to get to know her family better, she comes to work at their company in France. But when her identity is discovered, she’s whisked away to the countryside hide from the publicity by her charming boss Phillipe. This is the fifth book in the Heirs to an Empire series, but I followed it quite easily without having read any of […]

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!

Rapture and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Daniel Mark Epstein (Editor)

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Starting in 1907 as a teenager, Edna St Vincent Millay began documenting her life in a series of diaries, ending in 1949. These diaries chart her early hopes and dreams, her rise to fame as one of the most prominent American contemporary poets, her farm life with her husband Eugen, and her struggles with alcohol and morphine addiction. I am not a reader of poetry – it simply doesn’t appeal to me terribly. Consequently my knowledge of all but the most well-known poets is a […]

Comfy Tropes Galore, But Not Particularly Trope-y

First Comes Baby... by Christine Rimmer

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Josie has given up on finding a partner after being unlucky in love and chooses to have a baby on her own. But when she gives birth with the help of her neighbor Miles, a connection is formed between the two, and they decide to get married to form a comfortable family unit. But of course, the marriage-of-convenience is not as convenient as it seems… I picked up this book for an obvious reason: There is a smiling baby flying through the air on the […]

Fourteen Hundred Years of History; Still Uncovering the Women whose Achievements were Hidden.

The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry that Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak

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I work in Public History, but any good public historian (or historian of any stripe) will tell you that it is nearly impossible to know all eras and areas well. There are inevitable blind spots – you must choose where to apply your limited time. When this year’s Read Harder challenge asked us to read a history about a period you know little about, I was stoked, an excuse to go back further than I normally do and read about some women doing the leading. […]

Worth and Expectations

Her Favorite Rebound (Cider Bar Sisters #4) by Jackie Lau

A Very Beery New Year (Cider Bar Sisters #3.5) by Jackie Lau

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Her Favorite Rebound Sierra Wu is thirty-four, divorced, does not want children and is a constant disappointment to her family. They are horrified that she quit her engineering job (that she hated) to run a small greeting card store (that she loves) four years ago. Sierra is used to living a pretty small life, so the last thing she expected was being swept off her feet by Colton Sanders, the billionaire (think Jeff Bezos type). They’ve been together for a year, and despite his reputation […]

Go Ask Alice… If You Can Find Her!

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

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One of the breakout books of the YA genre was Go Ask Alice, the purported diary of a nameless teenage drug addict and runaway. However, the story behind that book and its follow-up, Jay’s Journal, is far more convoluted and amorally exploitative than anyone would expect. I have actually read Go Ask Alice. I was interested in it because of the controversy surrounding its reality, and reading the protagonist’s wild dash through various illicit drugs made it pretty clear that it was indeed not real. The overblown writing […]



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