Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Jekyll and Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Althought I had never read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I thought I had a basic understanding of the storyline about a man who through a series of events creates a split personality within himself, one good and one evil. Imagine my surprise when I actually read this book and I discovered I was very wrong about most of this story, and my understanding of what it was about was heavily influenced by the Jekyll and Hyde musical. There is no […]

“Bones is what they are now.”

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Family and friends recently took a trip down to the coast. I’ve always heard of beach reads, but I’ve never actually read anything while sitting on the beach. This was my chance! I loaded up my waterproof Kobo with some appropriate reading. Enter, Treasure Island. Somehow, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and I had always passed one another, like…TWO SHIPS IN THE NIGHT. But even though I missed this book in my childhood, it certainly had all of the danger and wonder that make a […]

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.

Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

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Doctor Jekyll and My Hyde – 4/5 Stars This is still a wonderful and silly novel. I am thinking of teaching this novel for twelfth graders in a few weeks, but I am realizing from this reread that while the novel is short, there’s some stylistic flourishes that I think are going to stand in the way of enjoyment and analysis. Even the opening few pages, in just describing a weird scene in the street, the opening chapter has to think about the nature of […]

The Muppets Did it Better

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

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As Tropical Storm Isaias took out our power, and one of my quarantine goals is to actually read books I own instead of buying more, I thought it appropriate to read this children’s classic that’s been sitting on my shelf for years. Like many of my books, I have no idea where this copy came from, which partially lead to its appeal. And even though I loved “Muppet Treasure Island” so much, I broke the VHS back in the 90s, I’d never read the source […]

Dead men don’t bite

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

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So my prevailing question through a lot of this novel was: is the most concentrated usage of pirate tropes, or, did this book invent all of those pirate tropes? And I think the answer is probably a little in the middle, but it’s interesting because this book feels like THE pirate book. And it’s kind of barely about pirates really. What I mean by this, is that this book more than anything else is a book about a mutiny. Yes, there’s a parrot who sings […]

He Would Name His Parrot After Captain Flint, Wouldn’t He?

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Just as a number of readers before me have also done, I came to read Treasure Island after recently flying through the tv series Black Sails (I wasn’t sure about it at first, but I quickly came around and loved it by the end), which is a prequel to the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Although, I didn’t realize this for quite an embarrassingly long time, but then, all my previous engagement with the story has been in the form of The Muppets adaptation […]



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