Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I am not an angel, and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself” Charlotte Bronte

Bronte by Manuela Santoni

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I was given a readers copy of this graphic novel. I was curious about it due to the interesting cover, and I like biographies told in graphic novels. And even if it was going to be a story/memoir like book, and not a “true” biography, I still thought it was going to be informative. I finally picked it up because I was looking for something easier to get into. I needed a break from the mess of novels that I had found myself tangled in […]

Forget your Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. The original is far more weird then they could ever manage.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

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  Of the three Bronte sisters, Emily wrote only one book, Wuthering Heights, and it was a corker.  Set on the Yorkshire moors, this was not the ultra-romantic tale you might have expected from the movie versions.  No, these people are feral, and there is but a sliver of difference between love and hate in their hearts. So a brief summary.  There are two properties on the Yorkshire moors – Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.  Heathcliff is brought to Wuthering Heights as a foundling (implied […]

Inherit the Hate

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

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Unsurprisingly, my first exposure to Wuthering Heights was Kate Bush’s 1978 single, the namesake to the book. Based on listening to the chorus (never a lyrics listener, it’s the music that matters) you might think the book is romantic: Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy I’ve come home. I’m so cold Let me in-a-your window Maybe Cathy has run away from home to Heathcliff’s abode, situated in the middle of the moors. After letting Cathy in from a window (maybe the door’s broke, anyway it’s just […]

ooohhhh booyy is it not a love story

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

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This book was given to me as a parting gift when I left Yorkshire. I had been to Haworth to see the Brontë parsonage and I’d walked the moors behind the house and I had lived in and understood the sweet melodic dialect of West Yorkshire. All this lent the book a certain sweetness that the two horrible main characters did everything in their power to disrupt. I mean, I knew this wasn’t going to be a love story, but like ooohhhh booyy is it […]

Poems; Girls; Heights; Faces

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Long Way Down – 5/5 To paraphrase Jason Reynolds in an interview he gives at the end of the book, this is a combination of “Boyz in the Hood” and “A Christmas Carol.” As with other Jason Reynolds novels, there’s a central conflict between what a character feels is the right thing to do based on his lived experience, the implicit messages that happen around him, the images, his history, and lots of other coded and secretive influences versus the on the paper ethics of […]

One Great Pre-Victorian Domestic

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I think a personal theme of this year’s cannonball has been the ruining of books well-remembered. I read Wuthering Heights in high school and loved it. As that was many years ago, I thought I’d do a re-read to see if I would still enjoy what the book jacket describes as ‘one of the most haunting and atmospheric love stories ever written.’ I’m sure I agreed with that sentiment as a sixteen-year-old. But now…. Let me start with a list of all the things this […]



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