Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Reviewing a classic and introducing a kitten!

Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

by 9 Comments

I know I’ve read Bradbury before, but I think it’s been since high school and I don’t think I ever read this one. I read this for my library sci-fi book club, and it’s been the most divisive one we’ve read since I’ve joined. Several of us thought the writing was beautiful and the stories were interesting, but several others thought it was too old and dated and sexist. Good discussion, though! Each chapter is a story of how Mars came to be colonized, starting […]

“F**k you this is hilarious.”

Texts from Jane Eyre by Daniel M. Lavery

by 9 Comments

That ^ is Roxane Gay’s entire review of the Texts from Jane Eyre on Goodreads and it cracked me right up. The book is currently rated an average of 3.61 stars out of 5, so I assume that’s what she’s referring to. Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favourite Literary Characters (and also their authors, just so’s you know), is based on the feature of the same name (the first part of the name) from The Toast. The feature askes: if literary […]

Reading Austen Is Really Just a British Travel Guide

Persuasion by Jane Austen

by Leave a Comment

Any time I read Austen, I find myself much more interested in the settings than the actual story. This may be because I’m not a fan of romance, and at their core, most of Austen’s work revolve around character’s getting together. But her ability to place me so specifically in her settings is one of my favorite parts of the Austen novels. In Persuasion, we move from the English countryside to the shore town of Lyme, and lastly to Bath. Until reading this, I’d never heard […]

I kinda wanna try faerie fruit

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

by Leave a Comment

The town of Lud sits on the borders of Faerie at a place where two rivers join. Everyone in Lud prefers to pretend that Faerie just doesn’t exist, but when the children of some of Lud’s most prominent families start consuming highly addictive faerie fruit – and some even disappearing over the borders of Faerie – Lud’s Mayor Nathaniel Chanticleer (whose own child has also been at the fruit) decides something must be done. Lud-in-the-Mist is a very charming book that, despite sometimes feeling a […]

“We need new songs.”

The Silence of the Girls: A Novel by Pat Barker

by 1 Comment

I recently reviewed Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles for CBR12 bingo, and I referred to it as a gateway into a genre I call “reimagined classics” or “classics fanfic”. The Silence of the Girls is yet another outstanding addition to this genre and it happens to overlap with The Song of Achilles, presenting several main characters and incidents from The Iliad from a very different perspective. Pat Barker imagines for us the life of Briseis, a Trojan princess who becomes Achilles’ slave. Through the […]

Can you imagine a life where all you have to do is summer in the Italian countryside?

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

by Leave a Comment

CBR12 BINGO: I Wish Double BINGO! Vertical: The Roaring 20s, Pandemic, Friendship, Green, I Wish Horizontal: Money, No Money, Repeat, I Wish, Violet The title of my review comes from the classic episode of The Office in which we learn about the Finer Things Club. Oscar: Can you imagine a life where all you have to do is summer in the Italian countryside? Pam: And spend time with George Emerson. That’s what I would do. That sums up why I selected A Room with a View […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo