Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Just Your Basic Oklahoma Western

Cimarron by Edna Ferber

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I do love me some Edna Ferber.  The thing about her books is that they always read like big Technicolor epic movies, way before such a thing existed.  They certainly didn’t in 1929, when this was published.  But so many have been turned into such, like this book (twice, first time winning one of the first Best Picture Academy Awards), Show Boat, Giant, and Saratoga Trunk, to name a few. So our hero, Yancy Cravat, is a hot bull-headed force of nature.  Think Clark Gable […]

Edna Ferber

So Big by Edna Ferber

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“Until he was almost ten the name stuck to him. He had literally to fight his way free of it. From So Big (of fond and infantile derivation) it had been condensed into Sobig. And Sobig DeJong, in all its consonantal disharmony, he had remained until he was a ten-year-old schoolboy in that incredibly Dutch district southwest of Chicago known first as New Holland and later as High Prairie. At ten, by dint of fists, teeth, copper-toed boots, and temper, he earned the right to […]

Wrapping Up 2019 (More Books Read Than Reviewed)

American Like Me by America Ferrera

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

So Big by Edna Ferber

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill us by Hanif Abdurraqib

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So this has been a year when sitting down to write book reviews has not been my strong suit.  According to Goodreads, I’ve read 47 books and that may actually be missing one or two; however, I don’t think I’m going to make it to a half Cannonball this year. So, here are some books that I read this fall that I thought were worth mentioning, even if I didn’t give them full reviews at the time. American Like Me-Reflections on Life Between Cultures: America […]

Sometimes I need reading homework

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4/5 Stars So the idea I had for myself, to give myself some reading structure is based on finding a review for this history and adding some fiction to supplement it. I love the Gilded Age, and I think it’s incredibly weird and interesting of a time period. We know a lot about the world and culture of the Gilded Age because it’s the same world that inhabits all the Wild West novels and movies, it’s the world post-Civil War, and it’s the cultural ethos […]

Edna Ferber, 20th Century Feminist Novelist

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It’s time to take a new look at an author who wrote most of her work nearly 100 years ago! Edna Ferber won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925 for her novel So Big. She also penned the book that’s the basis of the musical Showboat and two books made in to successful movies, Giant and Cimarron. However, very few modern readers know her name. All of her stories deal with racial tension and gender bias, topics rarely addressed so openly in her day but certainly […]

The Measure of a Man

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Edna Ferber was once the most famous female novelist in the United States. A member of the famed Algonquin Table, Ferber wrote several novels that were turned into classic movies, including Showboat, Giant, and Cimarron. Ferber’s So Big won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for literature. I’m not sure why her novels get so little attention these days. This is the first that I have read, and I am probably going to try a few more. I found So Big to be a timely and relevant […]



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