Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

In which I begin to question my choices

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon

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Series: Outlander. I read book 1 in 2015. What I remember about this series prior to reading this book: Not much. A married nurse in Scotland accidentally goes back in time and falls in love with a big, hairy Scotsman from several centuries ago. There’s a lot of disturbing sexual violence and the first book was ridiculously long. Why I stopped reading the series: See above re: sexual violence and book length. The plot: Claire (the nurse from Book 1) is back in her own […]

Ehhh, it was fine, but a lot of the magic was lost from the first

The Glamourist by Luanne G. Smith

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I really enjoyed the first book in this series The Vine Witch. Interesting magic, self-contained story, solid pacing, believable romance, fun mix of characters. The Glamourist, the second entry in The Vine Witch series, loses a lot of the fun and magic of the first book. While still a self-contained story which I greatly appreciate, The Glamourist lacks focus and fails to add anything interesting to the stories of characters that stick around. It’s– fine. Vine witch and potion master, Elena Boureanu, finds herself in Paris with her […]

Hemingway is jerk

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

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Last week the BF and I did a Paris-themed date night from the claustrophobic comfort of our condo.  I made a playlist with Edith Piaf, cracked a bottle of wine and put a Youtube tour of the Louvre on in the background.  I also started reading A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s memoir of his Paris years in the 20’s- I’d been saving it for my next physical trip to the City of Lights, but as that trip might be years out, I thought I’d indulge in […]

Lyrical, Soulful, Compelling

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugan

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I’ve been wanting to read Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugan’s Giller prize-winning, Booker prize-shortlisted novel, ever since it came out in 2011- its only taken a “Music” bingo square to finally get me there.  Half-Blood Blues is a beautifully written, deeply layered, and historically fascinating novel about a group of mixed-race jazz musicians in Paris and Berlin during the wild interwar years.  The novel opens in Paris in 1941, when one of the band members gets ‘pinched’ by the occupying Nazis. From this navel, the […]

Not your typical Paris bookstore novel

Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan

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Real book lovers love to read books about bookstores.  Make it a bookstore in Paris and that is even better!  I have read several bookstore in Paris books.  They usually follow a similar plot – confused woman somehow ends up owning a bookstore in Paris and her life changes – typically because of a wild romance with a wonderful Frenchman.  Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan may be about a bookstore in Paris, but the plot is unique. Leah has lost her husband.  That […]

Books, Paris and books about Paris

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

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I am a sucker for books and Paris, and books about Paris, so I had high expectations for this book.  Jean Perdu is the lovelorn owner/operator of the Literary Apothecary, a floating book barge on the Seine from which he prescribes books to heal his customers.  Perdu has been avoiding reading the ‘Dear John/Jean’ letter that his last lover, Manon, sent him when she left 20 years ago. When he does finally open Manon’s letter, he discovers that she had been trying to say a […]



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