Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

1984 by George Orwell

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I don’t often reread books, the old adage of so little time, so many books ticking like a clock behind me. This is the book I have reread the most, at least 10 times at this point, and the book that I say is my favorite book of all time, depending on the audience. (My favorite book is really Lamb by Christopher Moore, but that is a fictional “what if” about the life of Jesus, that entire chunk that is missing in the Bible, and […]

She loves moths, people!

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

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As a kid, I hated bugs. I feared many of them. But for some reason, in junior high, I fell in love with Gene Stratton-Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlost. I recently remembered how I’d re-read my favorite scenes aloud, imagining myself as the lead girl. But for the life of me I couldn’t remember anything else about it, so I decided a re-read was in order. The book was written in 1909, and is a companion to Freckles, which I have not read. This caused some […]

La Parisienne

The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola

Nana by Émile Zola

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The Ladies’ Paradise – 4 stars Denise Baudu comes dirt-poor to Paris with her younger brothers to work at her uncle’s shop, but instead goes to work at its greatest competitor – the ever-growing department store the Ladies’ Paradise, presided over by the Great Seducer Octave Mouret, who falls in love with Denise only to find out she may be one of the only things in the world he cannot buy. I was in the mood for a Victorian novel, but none of the usual […]

“It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.”

The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie

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Buckle up, buttercups. Ya girl has got 15 reviews a’coming. I am mildly annoyed I got this bogged down, but I’m remembering the words of my husband from a few years back when I would get anxious and frustrated about this scenario. “Ah. So you’re behind on your pretend homework?” Touche, sir. It’s important to me, and that’s fine, but I used to not read until I had written a review. Unnecessarily punative much?? Glad that I have been able to relax about it and […]

The classic and this reviewers review

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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I have finally read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. While texting a friend, I said to her I think one of the issues I have with this book is that it has been so popular and pushed so hard as one of the greatest books ever written, that I think my skepticism came to light early on. I mean, how can anything be that good? If you have to force people to think something is good by pushing it so much, it has […]

Giving a voice to the voiceless

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

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“Of arms and the man I sing,” begins Virgil’s Aeneid, though women are pivotal in his story of war and love. Upon one character, Lavinia, hinges the relationships between the Latins and the Trojans, and yet she has no lines at all in the poem and is tellingly described by Virgil as “ripe for marriage.” Ursula K. Le Guin attempts to correct this injustice by retelling the poem through Lavinia’s eyes. Lavinia is an interesting novel in that, not only does Le Guin give voice […]



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