Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Djinn. Ghuls. Sorcerers. Never had to worry about this in my grandfather’s day.

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

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A Dead Djinn in Cairo CBR 17 Bingo: Border This refers to the border between the earthly plane and what lies beyond. *cracks knuckles* Here we go. I’ve been procrastinating on writing book reviews because it’s always more appealing to just start a new book than to sit down and summarize the book I either devoured or endured. With the ones I devoured, I doubt whether or not I can be objective since I was so into it when I was reading and still felt […]

“Good Morning with roses and jasmine,”

A Good Morning for Giddo by Dahlia Constantine and Irene Latham

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Picture books are a great way to read a book without reading a few hundred pages. They still can entertain, give factual information and make you laugh. Of course, you can cry and be mad, too, as everything is there, as well. I have said this before and will say it again: Picture books are legitimate books. And A Good Morning for Giddo is a very legitimate book. It does not have a big action scene and the message is a little slow in the […]

You’ll flip for this adventure(s)

Double Booking: The Tail of the Mummy Cat by Pangburn, Kim Shearer and Nic Touris

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Do you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? (FYI: they still have them. ) Anyway, at first, I thought that the book, Double Booking: The Tail of the Mummy Cat by Pangburn, Kim Shearer and Nic Touris, was going to be one of them when I found an online reader copy of it (though currently available). I figured, well this will be interesting to try and read. Thankfully (or maybe not thankfully depending on if you think it might be fun to try a […]

“It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. “

Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age by Kathleen Sheppard

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In the so-called Golden Age of Egyptology, it was men who were known world-wide as the archeologists and academics who wrestled the secrets of Ancient Egypt from the desert, carrying away much of what they found. In this book, Sheppard turns the spotlight on female Egyptologists, who had less recognition but were equally instrumental in the early days of the discipline. I’m not very familiar with Egyptology in the Gilded Age beyond Howard Carter’s famous “Yes, wonderful things!” and a vague understanding of how the […]

Egyptology, a Met Gala and an Art Heist

The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

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I’m not sure if it’s me or the author, but while I have enjoyed the last few Fiona Davis novels I have read, I also don’t think they have been as good as some of her earlier books. I think part of it might be that the two I enjoyed the most had more time between the two view points of the dual narratives so there was a bit more of the modern person discovering the story of the past while these last ones I […]

Many Truths, No Lies

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

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I knew next to nothing about Cleopatra going into this one. I know she lead Egypt at some point and had an affair with Marc Antony and that all of this caused a Mediterranean kerfuffle in the time of the Roman Empire. But I couldn’t say what her power was or what era she lived in or any of that. I couldn’t even guess, not even taking material from the wildly inaccurate plays and movies about her as I’ve seen none. So it felt good […]



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