Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Tales of a Queer Cross Country Road Trip

Real Queer America by Samantha Allen

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Review 1 for Bingo (Own Voices): Here’s the scenario for Real Queer America: A transgender reporter and a friend/scribe take a trip across the American Southwest, South, and the Midwest to document LGBTQ lives and history. Along the way, old friends are visited, new ones made, memories evaluated, and research is done. Two things surprised me about this book: first, how deeply researched it is (I will be looking up some of the historical and theoretical references cited), and second, how hopeful it is about […]

Introducing Holmes and Watson

A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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Cbr11bingo Pajiba Reviewing mysteries is tough. One has to be careful not to spoil the story for others, and yet often the very issue I would want to address in my review is directly related to the big reveal in the story. I will do my best not to spoil A Study in Scarlet for others while trying to convey my concerns with it. A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887, is the first Sherlock Holmes mystery. The reader sees Holmes through the eyes of […]

Born Under an Evil Star

Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann

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In 1680, 73-year-old Mademoiselle de Scudéri is a respected poet at the court of Louis XIV in Paris. She inadvertently becomes involved in solving a series of murders and robberies that have mostly wealthy gentlemen as their targets who are on their way to their mistresses with expensive jewellery.  These crimes have plagued the city for some time and the authorities are anxious to solve them. First published in 1819, this is generally acknowledged as the first German crime fiction story, with the Mademoiselle at […]

How we slice the skin

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett

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CBR11Bingo – Rainbow Flag This novel was recently released and it reminds in some direct ways of other Florida writers. The most obvious connection would be to Karen Russell’s Swamplandia, a novel I really disliked, but by way of Harry Crews, a writer who I have mixed feelings about, but have enjoyed a few of his books. This book has some clear strengths, and some unfortunate weaknesses. There’s a lot to the context of the story. We are dealing with our narrator Jessa-Lynn, who finds […]

Olivia understood that actually they would be happier without her

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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CBR11Bingo – Award Winner This is a Booker Prize winning novel from 1975. This novel also became a movie made by Merchant/Ivory and Prawer Jhabvala wrote the screenplay, which she continued to do for other Merchant/Ivory movies. She split her career writing films and writing novels. The novel is told through a singular narrator, but two different narratives. There’s a contemporary narrative of the young narrator living in India and having researched her great grandmother, an English woman and wife of an English officer who […]

Cannonballer Says….. thanks to everyone who reviewed this last year

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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It’s my CBR11Bingo Cannonballer Says Square, thanks to: narfna, velveeter, Aquillia, Jenny S, alwaysanswerb! Before I was a CBR participant I was a CBR lurker. I am always looking for something new to read and this book- and author- got such strong reviews that I’ve had it on my ‘ok I’m finally going to get to this’ reading list for months. Miryem is the daughter of a money-lender in a small town. Her father is too soft-hearted to be any good at his chosen profession, […]



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