Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Reader, this was an absolute delight

Reader, I Married Him by Tracy Chevalier (editor)

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Reader, we all know how we feel about Jane Eyre. We also know how we feel about that fateful sentence: Reader, I married him. This collection of 21 stories, created to celebrate Charlotte Bronte’s 200th birthday in 2016 and written by an all-female team of authors, all have strong feelings on the matter as well, and these stories run the gamut from the reverent to the satirical. This collection is a jewelry box in your grandmother’s attic full of treasure and cheap pieces alike, and […]

familiar fables

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

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Familiar stories are passed, one by one, from one storyteller to another. There are thirteen tales in Kissing the Witch; some will be immediately recognizable, some will require you to dust off your mental library, and some are fantastically new- conjured from collective memory and superstition but new none the less. Each tale is handed off from teller to teller; frequently the perceived villain will be the heroine of the following story. Most are, to quote Emmylou Harris, “full of heartbreak and desire”. She sings that […]

Not to be confused with the famously terrible Tommy Wiseau film

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CBR10 Bingo: Snubbed (short-listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize) – BINGO #2! Jack is a typical five-year-old boy. He likes cartoons and birthday cake and bouncing on the bed. He does phys ed with his mother, timing how many laps they both can make around the room and celebrating when he wins. He likes picture books and drives his mother to distraction when he makes her read Dylan the Digger over and over and over. He’s whip smart for a 5-year-old; he knows that the […]

One Cannot Live on Faith Alone

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In a small Irish village in the 1850s a miracle is taking place. Or is it? Eleven year old Anna O’Donnell has been fasting for four months and yet is alive and well. Lib, an English nurse trained by Florence Nightingale, is sent to Ireland to watch the girl and report back to a committee about her findings. Is Anna a fraud or a blessed child? Lib is confident that it’s the former, but as Anna begins to deteriorate, she struggles with her own complicity […]

Hunger, religion, and faith

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I remember reading Room by Emma Donoghue and not being able to put it down. I was impressed that Donoghue was able to write such a sensitive story, with such a realistic viewpoint of a little boy in extraordinary conditions. Even more, I was glad that she  managed it without it feeling too exploitative. So when I saw that Donoghue had just written The Wonder (2016), I knew I wanted to read it. At first glance, The Wonder looks like it could not be more different than Room. It takes place in […]

Sad Babies Ruined It for Me

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Emma Donaghue’s Frog Music should have been a slam dunk for me. It’s a period piece murder mystery with a European element. I regret to say that it fell a little short of the mark for me. I think most people would enjoy the novel, however, so this won’t be an entirely negative review. Frog Music tells the story of the murder of Jenny Bonnet, a cross-dressing, walking, talking Mark Twain character in 19th century San Francisco, and the efforts of her friend Blanche Beunon, […]



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