Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I have been a character and I have been a narrator, but now I don’t know what I am.

Or What You Will by Jo Walton

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CBR15 PASSPORT (Stamp #13: Different Genres, Metafiction) CB515BINGO: (Europe square. Takes place in Florence, Italy. The city is very much a character in the book.) This is the right book for the right person but I am not that right person. Trying to summarize the plot here is going to be problematic because there are a lot of threads weaving this story. Here goes. A woman, Sylvia, is living in Florence, Italy as she nears the end of her battle with cancer. Sylvia is a successful author […]

Perhaps every generation passes to the next…an untouched trunk of virtues. The adults describe the trunk’s contents to the young and never open it.

The Maytrees by Annie Dillard

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CBR15 BINGO: (Bodies, Bodies Bodies square. Deals with the process of aging and death) Annie Dillard’s writing is gorgeous, layered and poetic. I read The Living years and years ago and still, when asked what my favorite books of all time are, it is on the top of that list. I can only remember basic points about the plot but I remember, very vividly, how reading that book made me feel. This is Dillard’s only other work of fiction and, while set in a different […]

CBR15 Bingo: On the Air

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin

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CBR15 Bingo: On the Air Official book description: Sales are slow at Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, the only halal restaurant in the close-knit Golden Crescent neighborhood. Hana waitresses there part time, but what she really wants is to tell stories on the radio. If she can just outshine her fellow intern at the city radio station, she may have a chance at landing a job. In the meantime, Hana pours her thoughts and dreams into a podcast, where she forms a lively relationship with one […]

CBR15 Bingo: Asia/Oceania

The Dragon and the Pearl by Jeannie Lin

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CBR15 Bingo: Asia/Oceania (set in 8th Century China) 15-word review: Chinese warlord and infamous courtesan to the former Emperor rusticate among the bamboo. Love blossoms. Ling Suyin used to be one of the now-deceased Emperor’s favourite consorts. Known for her beauty, grace, and arts of seduction, she now lives far away from the court, quite happy with her retirement. As a former concubine to the Emperor, Ling Suyin is supposed to remain loyal to him to her dying day, something that makes her feel rather […]

A book to read in bed

Cockroach and Other Stories by Jane Cornes Maclean

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Bingo:  You are here – the author lives in my city and my friend circle.  Jane calls this collection of short stories ficto-memoir, created by slicing off little pieces of her life and frying them up in the spice of fiction to make something delicious.   Within the span of twenty-one tales, some don’t stray far from the woman I know, an Englishwoman who has lived in Australia most of her life, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, who looks at life with insight, […]

“I may of use to you yet, my dear dragon”

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

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4.5 stars CBR15 Bingo: History (set in an alternate history, in the Victorian era) 15-word review: Introverted lady scholar goes to fictional Iceland to research faeries, followed by her handsome colleague. Official book description (because I finished this at the start of May): Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is […]



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