Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“…a racehorse is a mirror, and a man sees his own reflection there. He wants to think he’s from the best breeding. He wants to think himself brave. Can he win against all comers? And if not, does he have self-mastery to take a loss, stay cool in defeat, and try again undaunted? Those are the qualities of a great racehorse and a great gentleman.”

Horse by Geraldine Brooks

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I didn’t realize I could or would enjoy a book about horse racing, but here we are! I’m a bit bummed I missed my library book club meeting about this book because it would be fascinating for a discussion. In 2019, a master’s student of art finds a painting of a horse in his neighbor’s trash pile by the side of the road. He is intrigued and takes it to see what he can learn about it. Maybe it can be part of his thesis? […]

Hello Mudder

Horse by Geraldine Brooks

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Horse unfolds in three parallel narratives spanning three centuries. In the 19th century, an enslaved man learns the art of training a horse from his free father and goes on to a long association with the greatest racehorse of his era, the legendary Lexington. In the 20th Century, an influential art dealer known for her work with abstract painters takes an unlikely interest in a painting of Lexington done by a minor artist. And in 2019, an art historian and a scientist find themselves drawn […]

Race/Horse

Horse: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

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Cbr14bingo Time, Bingo #2 (down) This novel is set in three distinct time periods linked by a Civil War era thoroughbred named Lexington As far as I’m concerned Geraldine Brooks is one of the best historical fiction writers out there. I have read all of her novels. March won the Pulitzer Prize. Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonder: A Novel of the Plague were all outstanding. I felt that The Secret Chord, her previous novel, was not quite up to snuff, […]

Kind of a disappointment

The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks

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I love historical fiction and Geraldine Brooks has been one of my favorite writers in this genre. I have now officially read all of her novels. The Secret Chord (2015) is about one of the most famous men in history, King David. Very little factual information exists about him, and in this novel, Brooks imagines his rise to power and rule through the eyes of his advisor/seer, the prophet Natan. Natan has witnessed David’s ruthlessness firsthand, but he also senses David’s strong connection to the […]

Good book. Crap timing

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

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  Reading this book in early/mid-March 2020 was a huge error in judgement on my part.  I guess I thought immersing myself in a plague story would lessen my anxieties about the real world. It…didn’t work.  Having said this, Year of Wonders was truly a captivating read with a dynamic heroine who faces the horrors of the plague on and comes out on the other side deeply changed. Anna Frith is a somewhat timid young widow in a small English village who is making ends […]

Libris Mediocris

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

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*Sigh.* Folks. Before we get into this, the customary preamble. These things may seem unrelated at first, but hopefully they’ll make sense shortly enough. There’s a tossed-off line in Stella Gibbons’ excellent Cold Comfort Farm (the movie is also a scream if you haven’t seen it) where one of the characters, an irritating self-satisfied clod of a fellow, is working on a thesis which holds that all of the Brontes’ novels were actually written by their brother Branwell. The little-known film Titanic came out the winter after […]



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