Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Like Saturn, the Revolution Devours Its Children

The Glass-Blowers by Daphne du Maurier

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With the French Revolution as the historical background, du Maurier tells the story of a family of master craftsmen who prefer to live in a world of their own, with distinct traditions and rules, but when civil war breaks out, even they must choose a side. This is apparently based on du Maurier’s own family history, and the story is told by a fictional version of one of her ancestors. This is a great piece of historical fiction, and what sets it apart from other […]

Sweeping Story of the Brodrick Family

Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier

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So this to me is not a typical Daphne du Maurier novel. There are hints of some Gothic elements here and there with a curse being flung about. But other than that, du Maurier just follows along following five generations of the Brodrick family from 1820 to 1920 following five of the male characters from the Brodrick family. I have to say that from beginning to end the tale of “Hungry Hill” is going to grab you. And you start to wonder if a curse is […]

The perfect amount of creepy.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

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This was a book club pick in an attempt by our group to occasionally dip our toes into the classics. It had been in my TBR pile for a while, but I just hadn’t got to it yet, so being ‘forced’ into it was ok by me! Our heroine is an orphan girl working as a lady’s companion and we meet her as they are travelling abroad. During this trip, she meets the recently widowed Maxim de Winter. Despite his grief and melancholy, she makes […]

A Familiar Scent Rose Up Into the Air, and I Remembered Something Special From a Long Time Ago

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Rebecca is atmospheric, spooky, and sometimes downright scary. In it, our unnamed narrator meets the handsome widower Maxim de Winter while in Monte Carlo. They build a sort of friendship which eventually leads to a marriage (there’s no romance involved, as far as I can see), and he takes her back to his estate, Manderley. There she learns more about his first wife Rebecca, who was drowned in a sailing accident, and struggles to find her place as the head of the household. Her problems […]

“For a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me.”

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I had the same English teacher from 8th grade on through the rest of high school, save for one semester, and she was the best teacher I had. In our senior year, she assigned “leisure” reading, letting us choose from a pool of books to read on our own every few months, without class discussion, with only a very basic quiz to show we’d actually done the reading. She wanted us to develop a love of reading for reading’s sake, wanted to expose us to […]

Even better than Rebecca

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I’ll come clean: I only knew of this book because of the trailer for the film. I’d loved Rebecca, which I read last year, and thought I’d give this one a try as the trailer looked interesting and I wanted to read more of Du Maurier. It wasn’t exactly what I expected–but it was also better than expected. This book was absolutely fascinating and I adored it. I devoured it within a couple days, mesmerized. The story is told very much from the perspective of Philip Ashley, […]



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