Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“It is difficult, after the passage of more than a century, to understand the extent to which the train robbery of 1855 shocked the sensibilities of Victorian England.” #CBRBingo – Money!

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton

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I would love to see the movie version of this, which Crichton also wrote and directed. Sean Connery as Edward Pierce, the mastermind behind the robbery that threw Victorian England for a loop. He really was a smart guy. It’s obvious Crichton did his research about the period (apparently he became obsessed with the Victorian criminal underworld). The book is chock full of criminal slang. You catch the meaning eventually, and it certainly lends an atmosphere. This was a bit hard to get into at […]

“But I can have spiders in my head as long as I don’t let them consume me.” #CBRBingo – Happy

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

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This was very sweet and I was extremely charmed by it. I didn’t end up giving it the fifth star, because shmoopsy mostly doesn’t work for me, and this did get a bit shmoopsy there at the end. (Shmoopsy is a technical term.) But overall, this was witty and so sweet and heartwarming, with a light undercurrent of dark humor. I loved the worldbuilding; the gentle bite of the satire combined so well with the big hearts of the main characters. Briefly (because I think […]

Sometimes Friends Give You Bad Books

Pay the Piper: A Rock n' Roll Fairytale by Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple

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  As a librarian, Crystalclear is always on the hunt for books in her friends’ wheelhouses, and so I got a text from her asking if I’d like to read Pay the Piper. She hadn’t loved it, but thought maybe she was just the wrong audience. Would I give it a try and an honest review? I’m the perfect audience; faerie legends and fractured fairytales are my jam. I was really excited to read this. ::Sigh:: The book is split between chapters in the world of […]

For the Planetary Good – A Survival Guide

Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again by Lucy Siegle

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers approximately 1,6 million square kilometres, plastic has been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic trench on Earth, and by 2050 there could be more pieces of plastic in the ocean than fish. These are the facts Lucy Siegle tells us in the first part of this book, along with the backstory of the plastic dilemma, the truth about recycling, and the way plastic is pushed on us by retailers and manufacturers. In the second […]

Delightful

Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen

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CBR12 Bingo: Violet This book was an absolute delight. Lady Georgiana Rannoch, 34th in line to the throne, has just moved to London from her family’s estate to escape being betrothed to some homely European prince. She’s flat broke and has absolutely no useful skills. She spends her time learning to cook, clean, care for herself, and find ways to earn money when one day she walks into her bathroom to find that someone has drowned a Frenchman in her bathtub. She and her brother […]

Me and my pagan crew

Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw

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CBR Bingo: Fresh Start I chose Strange Practice for my Fresh Start square because I was really intrigued by the premise. Unfortunately, it ended up being kind of disappointing and I probably won’t continue the series. Strange Practice is the first Dr. Greta Helsing book, a mystery series that focuses on a London doctor whose patients are all supernatural. Dr. Helsing treats demons with chronic coughs, injured ghouls, arthritic barrow-wights, and any other supernatural creature you could think of. As the story opens there’s a […]



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