Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Virginal Adventures of Elinor the Stoic and Marianne the Fickle.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good taste must be in want of a Jane Austen book club. I am not single but I’m tasty, so it happened that one rainy May afternoon I did find myself elected chair of the Jane Austen book club at my work (it is an excellent place of work). My first order of business: the reading order of books will be chronological. No other way. Hence, Sense and Sensibility (1811). And […]

Reading Austen Is Really Just a British Travel Guide

Persuasion by Jane Austen

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Any time I read Austen, I find myself much more interested in the settings than the actual story. This may be because I’m not a fan of romance, and at their core, most of Austen’s work revolve around character’s getting together. But her ability to place me so specifically in her settings is one of my favorite parts of the Austen novels. In Persuasion, we move from the English countryside to the shore town of Lyme, and lastly to Bath. Until reading this, I’d never heard […]

A disappointment, a pleasant surprise, and an I-should-have-known-better.

Well Played by Jen DeLuca

Not Like the Movies by Kerry Winfrey

Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev

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Continuing with my year-end wrap-up of books that I didn’t feel like reviewing earlier, this post will feature three “sequels” to books I have previously read and reviewed. First up, Well Played. Truly, a disappointment. I was so looking forward to this one, a follow-up to last year’s fun and charming Well Met. Still set in the weird little Maryland town that obsesses over a summer Renaissance Faire, this time we focus on Emily and Simon’s friend Stacey, who worked as a pub wench with […]

More Magic A Little Austen and A Few Surprises

The True Queen by Zen Cho

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I’ve had The True Queen sitting on my shelf a while; long enough that I remember the general plot and characters of the first novel in the series (A Sorcerer to the Crown) which ended up being a little bit of a problem when I didn’t quite remember who certain characters were at first or how they were meant to relate to each other. The first novel is Jane Austen-esque, and this one keeps the general vibe, but the story this time is all new; […]

“I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

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There was a lot about Curtis Sittenfeld’s reimagining of Pride and Prejudice that I liked, and a lot that I felt fell flat. In the pro column: The whole conceit about Bingley being well known as being in want of a wife due to his being on Eligible – the obvious stand in for The Bachelor – and walking away from the finale not ready to marry any of the finalists. Cute! Aging the characters up: teenagers being obsessed with getting married just sits differently […]

Attention all people who love Jane Austen, I have a good book for you.

Jane Austen: The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

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I was just sort of expecting a fun book where the author points out passages in Austen’s work that adds credibility to the idea that Jane Austen was a radical thinker for her time. And that does occur here. (Radical, by the way, has a bit of a different usage here, in that it mostly means someone who is open to new ideas, and to rejecting the old if that is the right thing to do. That word has a negative association now that isn’t […]



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