Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Victor Frankenstein asks Reddit: AITA?

Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

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r/AmItheAsshole * Posted by u/doomedbyfate 1 hour ago AITA for bringing a creature to life and then abandoning him, resulting in him vowing revenge and murdering a bunch of people? I (20ish M) grew up in Geneva. My mother died when I was young, and her greatest wish was for me to marry Elizabeth, my adopted “cousin.” When I went off to college to study sciences, I discovered the secret to bestowing life. I can’t tell you how I did it, and when you read […]

A Stiff Upper Lip and a Blind Eye

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Oh, Mr. Stevens. A tragic hero if ever there was one. As a butler to a great house of Britain, he kept his eyes to the floor while the ravages of post-WWI Europe came to a boiling point in the halls of his dear Darlington Hall. Kazuo Ishiguro is a master of quiet suffering. His characters come to slow, stark, and utterly devastating conclusions just a moment before the enormity of their despair hits the reader. The Remains of the Day is arguably  his most celebrated […]

American Trilogy #2 – holds up to the first, but you don’t need me to tell you that Philip Roth knows what he is doing.

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth

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Philip Roth’s American Pastoral was one of my favorite reads of 2017, Pulitzer winning novels rarely let me down, and this was no exception. I did the audio of this book, and was riveted by the writing and the story. So, I had the second of his The American trilogy in my To Read pile when a wonderful CBR Book Exchange buddy gifted it to me…two year ago? Three? I’ve had it for a minute, but I decided this was the year! They say you […]

Are We Human or Rabbit?

Watership Down by Richard Adams

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While my father’s bedtime stories to me were Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, my husband’s father read him Watership Down. It’s a book I’d never heard of before meeting him, and as it was a huge part of his childhood, I felt I should finally get around to it. In a word, this book is about rabbits. On a larger scale, this book is about a journey, not unlike the hobbits’ trek in Lord of the Rings. But if you’re looking at this book metaphorically […]

A Portrait of Long-Lasting Wit

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

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I feel like the premise of this novel has entered our general cultural consciousness, but in case not, consider this a spoiler alert: a portrait is painted of an attractive young man, and the bad things he does are reflected not in his appearance but in the painting, which grows increasingly hideous. Given that I knew this plot going in, the pleasure in reading this novel wasn’t primarily in watching the plot develop (although there were several twists I didn’t see coming) but in Wilde’s […]

Choo-choo ch’boogie

Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown

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Like the Two Little Trains of the story, this story chugs along, building steam until you get to the end. It is here, it fizzles out. It just ends. There was nothing in between just watching the two trains go along the tracks. There is great potential for something to happen, but nothing does. Now, I am not looking for a train crash, but maybe a race where they tie. Or maybe people talking about how much fun they are having. Or maybe there are […]



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