Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Who knew a book with “bleak” in the title could be so much fun? (with helpful charts!)

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

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Bleak House has been brooding on my TBR list for years because, even though I’m a long-time Dickens fan, I was intimidated by the length and by what I perceived would be a weighty novel. I’m ecstatic that I overcame my hesitance, because this novel was more fun than a mariachi band on a roller coaster. Sure, about 9 people die, but you can’t make gruel without smashing a few oats, right? There are so many characters that the death toll amounts to maybe 12%, and […]

“He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father.”

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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For my last review of the year, I’m coming in hot with a classic. I’m a huuuuuge fan of a Dickens adaptation. The simple story of a jerk who is shown the error of his ways (by ghosts) and decides to live life anew, with a song in his heart and a renewed application of kindness to mankind, resonates with me. Christmas simply isn’t Christmas without watching the Muppet version of “A Christmas Carol.” Also, my husband introduced me to “Scrooged,” when we first started […]

Bleak House

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

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Sometimes I can write a 1000 word post on a short story or even a poem, but taking a 1000 page novel and figuring out what to do with it is too big a task. This novel begins with one of the absolute best opening chapters in all of English literature. The slow, meandering walk down the street outside the chancery courts with the absolutely disgusting yellow fog creeping in as an extended metaphor for the inhuman corruption of the court systems. Then the description […]

Hard Times for These Times

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

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So, Hard Times.  Or to give the book its full title, Hard Times for These Times.  And has there ever been a more perfect title for These Days? If you are unfamiliar with Charles Dickens, besides, perhaps, A Christmas Carol, there are a few things you ought to know about the man.  The man is, nearly always, On A Mission.  (OK, the Pickwick Papers is just plain fun.)  He’s from the Victorian era, newspapers have just been, more or less, invented, and his books are […]

It turns out that sometimes having a background in English literature pays off

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry

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Official book description: For his entire life, Charley Sutherland has concealed a magical ability he can’t quite control: he can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob – a young lawyer with an utterly normal life – hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other.   But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying […]

Somehow this all seems familiar

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry

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I don’t remember how I heard about The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, but I saw it on a library shelf not long after I heard about it, so of course I had to check it out (pun intended). The story concentrates on two brothers, Rob the older from whose perspective the story comes, and Charley the younger, genius of the sort who finished a PhD and publishes an academic book on Dickens at the age of nineteen. There is the usual kind of brotherly […]



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