Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The doom has come upon me.”

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (Miss Marple, #9) by Agatha Christie

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One part of this was uncomfortably dated, but otherwise this was a fun listen. There is somewhat of an epic red herring (I think that’s what we would call it) in this one, and I didn’t see it coming at all. It helps that I really like Emilia Fox as a narrator. The one downside with her is that she flattens out the characters with American accents, but her British characters are superb. An American film star moves into Miss Marple’s neighborhood (in the very […]

This metaphor is a metaphor for my metaphor.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

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This is a really tough one for me to review, and not because of the subject matter. I wasn’t drawn to this one on my own, but picked it up because one of my real life book clubs chose it for January. I did the audio because it was available on SCRIBD, a service I already pay for, and I didn’t have time to do the hard copy with my already packed January TBR. This turned out to be a mistake, I think, though not […]

“She accepted the visit and lived in anticipation, wondering what was to come. It was November 19, 1950. She would be dead in ten days.”

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

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I’m not going to compare this to The Sun-Down Motel, which is the only other book of hers I’ve read, because they are very different books, which I wasn’t expecting because of their seeming similarities (dual timelines, ghosts, murder). And on its own, I enjoyed listening to this book very much. (Rebecca Lowman does a good job with the narration, although her male performances sometimes slip into silliness.) The two timelines are: Vermont, 1950, at the boarding school of Idlewind, a school for girls who […]

19th century medicine was unhinged, and this book revels in that.

Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz

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Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. I did the thing where the beautiful cover lured me in, but this time it wasn’t a disaster! In fact, the book mostly earns it! I was *thisclose* to giving Anatomy: A Love Story five stars, in fact, until the ending. YMMV on this ending, seriously. What happened is something that I have read in YA historical fiction books before, and it bothered me there as well, and […]

“At last we meet again for the first time, for the last time.”

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

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All I’ve got in my head right now is that line from Spaceballs (see title of this review). I say that because every year I read a handful of books that I am just absolutely at a loss for how to review. This is my first one of 2022! I just want to say la la la la la and maybe read it again, but I’m expected instead to verbalize my thoughts about a book that covered so much and was so good and so […]

“Lip . . . Dip . . . Paint.”

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

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What I have to say about this book can be whittled down to one classic Samuel L. Jackson moment in cinema: And I truly mean that. Anyone with an ounce of empathy will find this one a tough go. Moore extensively researched the women this story is about, and she pulled not only from scholarly books and articles about them, but from their own personal correspondence, journals, and memories from friends and family. The result is that you get a clear picture of just exactly […]



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