Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Come for Mary Shelley and Ada Lovelace, stay for PAN (Practical Automaton Number One).

My Imaginary Mary (Mary, #2) by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton & Jodi Meadows

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Still not as good as the first Lady Janie book. A lot of this made no sense, and anachronisms were flying around willy-nilly, but I had a good time. My Imaginary Mary is what you get when you mix light fantasy (there are fairies! and Mary Godwin (Shelley) is one! (different kind of fairy than you’d expect)), alternate history (what if Mary met Ada Lovelace?), and a truly ridiculous sensibility (they invent the name Peter Pan for some reason?) with egregious unconcern for historical accuracy. […]

Again with the Eðians!

My Contrary Mary (Mary, #1) by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows

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**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 15/30 Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the ARC! It has not affected the content of my review. I have just finished this and it was glorious. I didn’t know we’d be returning to the same world that their first book was set in! I’ve missed those Eðians. You can read this without having read My Lady Jane first, but I would reccomend doing it anyway because that book is wonderful. That makes this book an unofficial sequel. […]

Jane sees dead people

My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, & Jodi Meadows

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I completely ADORED My Lady Jane a few years ago. It was so refreshing and funny and unique, with such a great audio narrator. I had high hopes for this next book in the series and HALLELUJAH it delivered. It’s not quite as shockingly quirky as My Lady Jane (nobody’s fiance regularly turns into a horse for one), but what it lacked in quirk, it made up in literary references and jokes. Most of the Bronte family gets roped into the narrative here and it’s […]

Jane Eyre sees dead people

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As a woman raised and educated in America, I have read a good chunk of the Brontë/Austen collection of literature – I dunno, I just never really cared for it. It always carried the scent of English class, which is odd, because I liked my English classes. And I really liked the teacher I had for 10th grade English class, which focused on British literature where we read stuff like Wuthering Heights, et al. But these and Dickens always made me just say “eh” which is […]

#CBR10 Bingo – So Shiny: My Plain Jane

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#CBR10Bingo: So shiny This review will contain spoilers for Jane Eyre, but that book is more than 170 years old, and therefore, if you don’t know the gist of the plot already, that’s really not my fault. In this slightly alternate universe, King George III of England was not actually mad, he just saw ghosts and could talk to them (making others believe he wasn’t quite right in the head). He founded a society “for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits”, led by none other than the Duke […]

Finally, A Jane Eyre I Can Get Behind

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I don’t like any of the Bronte siblings books. Jane Eyre is the only one of their books I have managed to finish. I hated it. I would not have picked this up if I hadn’t loved My Lady Jane. Even so, I picked it up with trepidation. Everything was fine. There is a great star crossed love story here. There are wild moors. There are broody gentlemen. There is a horrible school with an abusive headmaster. But there is also feminism, wit, charm, ghosts, and […]



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