Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It seems I can love horror

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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CBR15 BINGO: Dwelling. Hill House is not only integral to the story but also a character in itself. Like many American high school students, I read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” in ninth grade and then proceeded to ignore Jackson for the majority of my book-consuming life. First published in The New Yorker in 1948, “The Lottery” was shocking for its twist and has been banned or challenged in school districts for being, among other things, anti-family. Given the influence Jackson had on American literature, I’m […]

Isn’t it pretty to think so?

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

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CBR15 BINGO: Sex, because people are having casual sex in this book, except for Jake because. . .ya know. It has been banned and challenged because of its focus on sex (in addition to general debauchery). BINGO: South America, Politics, Take Flight, In the Wild, Sex “You’re an expatriate, you’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an […]

Chet’s jalopy is stolen! It must be a Hardy Boys mystery!

The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon

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CBR15 BINGO: Nostalgia, because who didn’t read the Hardy Boys when they were a child? My husband has a sizable collection of Hardy Boys mysteries from when he was a child. His grandparents gave him this first mystery in the series in 1978 (per the inscription on the title page). He’s often spoken about how there were little notes from his grandmother at intervals throughout the books, indicating that when he reached that page he’d get a dime. Well I read this entire book, God […]

What truth does deception for deception’s sake reveal?

Amoralman: A True Story and Other Lies by Derek Delgaudio

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CBR15 BINGO: Adulthood, because it describes how the author grew into himself and his career Bingo! Take the Skies, Relation”Ship”, North America, You Are Here, Adulthood A couple of years back, a friend recommended (nay, demanded) that I get a free 30-day Hulu subscription so I could watch Derek Delgaudio’s In & Of Itself. I hate signing up for subscriptions to watch one show or movie, but it sounded intriguing and the friend assured my husband and me that we would appreciate it. A show […]

“What sort of man would wish to murder the president of another land? None but a barbarian.”

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

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CBR15 BINGO: Politics, because it addresses U.S. and Belgian involvement in the Congo In 1959, evangelical Baptist preacher Nathan Price takes the word of God to the Belgian Congo, bringing his wife and four daughters with him. Though the mission is supposed to last one year, the family’s stay is extended through the sheer stubbornness and bad judgment of their patriarch and, while the novel spans 30+ years, the majority of it takes place in the few years that Price is actively proselytizing in a […]

Maybe the series gets better?

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

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CBR15 BINGO: Bodies, Bodies because it’s right there in the title (and also because of the dead body) Being on a renewed Agatha Christie kick lately, I thought I’d switch things up a bit and read my first ever Dorothy Sayers, one of the other queens of the Golden Age of Detective fiction. I’d heard about the Lord Peter Wimsey series and thought it sounded right up my alley. I hate to say it, but this novel proved to be quite a slog. The mystery […]



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