Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Bennets Are the MacGuffin

Longbourn by Jo Baker

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Longbourn by Jo Baker is proof that new work based in an homage can be so much more than the wish-fulfillment and bizarre tangents of fan fiction. A lot of literature provides alternate perspectives of a known works and Baker took Pride and Prejudice, a novel known so well by so many, and used it as a starting point for an interesting and compelling new story. The Bennets and their love lives are the MacGuffin to hang the narrative upon, but what Baker shows the […]

How can you be a teenage misfit when your parents applaud and encourage rebellion?

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Nikolaj moves to a newly constructed house in a suburb in one of the counties surrounding Oslo in the early 1970s. His father is one of the architects who planned the area, and is full of dreams about the social opportunities the new affordable housing will mean for families in the area. As it turns out, most of the families who move in stick to a rigid routine of conformity and normality – their children wear the same thing, cut their hair the same way, […]

Friendship, Sacrifices, and Loneliness

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“My heart hurts,” said one of my students, crouching near her desk, after we finished the book  recently. She then asked if she could go in the hallway because her pain in response the story was so acute. Some others had tears in their eyes–the girls visibly so while the boys tried to hide or deny theirs. I had a lump in my throat and waited until I had control over my emotions so that I could formulate my words to speak. In all, I […]

Twilight for Adults

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“If there really were vampires, what would they do for a living?” That is a question that this book became the unexpected answer to, according to the author on her blog. As for me, although I’ve read that Harkness hasn’t read the popular YA series, I’d dare say this book could be considered a Twilight for adults. Compliment? Or criticism? You decide. But at its simplest, there are vampires, witches, and daemons. (If you’re not sure what a daemon is…think borderline insane, ADHD, wildly creative […]

So Much to Recommend It, But It Didn’t Live Up: Guests on Earth

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  Lee Smith’s Guests on Earth had so much to recommend it. I love books about my home state, North Carolina; it promised Zelda Fitzgerald as a main character, and was centered at the Highland Hospital, a mental institution which burned to the ground in 1948, claiming the lives of nine women; one of them the world-famous Zelda herself. That sounded interesting to me, so I dove in with high hopes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as great as I’d hoped, but it wasn’t as awful as it could […]

Putting the “lady” into lady detective

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The Hon. Phryne Fisher swaggers through the social scene of 1920s Melbourne, tossing cocktails down her throat and good looking young men into bed with equal facility. Melbourne in the 1920s is an uneasy mixture of glamour and poverty; Phryne, with her title, her unlimited reserves of funds and seductive sang-froid, as well as her street-smarts (and street-fighting skills) and connections, works as a private detective for the kicks rather than the cash, and as something to do between shopping for haute-couture and befriending the helpless and downtrodden. […]



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