Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Paltrow or Silverstone for me, please, but not my literary jam.

Emma by Jane Austen

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Okay. Confession time – I have never like the Bronte Sisters or Austen. If I were to analyze it’s because of two reasons. 1. Slooooooooow pacing. I like books with a bit more get-up-and go. 2. As a former English major, I felt like I was “supposed to” like these books, particularly because I was a girl, and in my youth I was a contrarian and determined NOT to like what other people did and yes I was probably exhausting about it. So, I wasn’t […]

This reimagining just doesn’t do justice to the old classic

Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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Almost every year I’ll take a time-out from holiday mayhem and revisit A Christmas Carol. I was reluctant to review it for CBR, though, because I did that already, back in 2014. So I hit the internet and searched for something Christmas-related that I hadn’t read before and found Mr. Dickens and His Carol on several lists of best Christmas books. Mr. Dickens and His Carol is a fictional account of how Dickens came to write that famous Christmas ghost story. A few details do come […]

Apparently I Am Not Fond of Phantoms

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

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Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. I tried very hard to get through this book and was very relieved to get to the last page. I didn’t enjoy this at all and thought the melodramatic “Phantom” was awful and the love triangle between him, his love Christine and Christine’s love Raoul was a bit much for me. I have to say the main reason why I gave this 2 stars was that Leroux definitely […]

This review has been inspired by the Thug Notes “Pride and Prejudice” episode. Also, spoilers.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

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So we have our girl Catherine Morland, one of ten Morland siblings.  She’s the son of a preacher man, so that’s cool. She starts out life as a tomboy, but gets over that by the time she turns fifteen.  Now seventeen, she gets to go on a sweet vacation to Bath with her neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Allen. Mr. Allen is going for his gout, and Mrs. Allen wants Catherine to go for company.  I suppose Mrs. Allen also knows that going on a six-week […]

I don’t enjoy being a hater, but I wish this book had remained a secret

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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CBR11bingo: Listicle (Goodread’s Books That Everyone Should Read At Least Once) The introductory blurb to The Secret Garden on Amazon reads, “Opening the door into the innermost places of the heart, The Secret Garden is a timeless classic that has left generations of readers with warm, lifelong memories of its magical charms.” I must be a much more cold-hearted bastard than anyone ever suspected and am likely to be doomed to the same circle of Hell as people who didn’t cry at the opening sequence of Up, because […]

Two Snow Whites, and two bingo squares!

Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm by by Randall Jarrell (Translator), Nancy Ekholm Burkert (Illustrator)

Snow White in New York by Fiona French

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So my sister is getting her Master’s degree in Art Education.  She’s currently in a class about picture books (or something along those lines).  Her homework for this week was to compare three different versions of a picture book, so since I thought at least two of the three books would work for me for bingo squares, I joined her in reading the books for her homework.  We got my nine year old niece involved too.  She actually read the books aloud to us, which […]



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