Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A girl came out of lawyer Royall’s house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood at the doorstep.

Summer by Edith Wharton

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Don’t let the seasonal image of idyllic warm months fool you; this one is pretty bleak. Charity is seventeen, more or less an orphan, and leaves her small rural life with relatives, to move to town and work with a local lawyer. The lawyer is stern and officious, and more offensive, he offers to marry her. She is repulsed and turns her attention to a hot local boy, Lucas. They flirt, it’s exciting, they have sex a bunch of times, and she gets pregnant. Later, […]

Surprisingly Serious Truths from a Seriously Silly Guy

Vacationland by John Hodgman

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John Hodgman is many things: Daily Show correspondent, a “PC”, podcast guest and host, internet judge, former literary agent, and generally droll New England weirdo. He wrote several books prior to  Vacationland, and all of those books were collections of “facts”. I say “facts”, as that is what he might say as well: Hodgman (with the help of Jonathan Coulton) created three full books of completely made-up facts that he presented as being VERY true. They are a weird delight, and sometimes they are correct, […]

I am forty-six years old and that is my insight, that life is made up of events that have to be parried.

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Spring – 5/5 Stars Summer – 4/5 Stars The first two volumes of Karl Ove Knausgard’s Årstidsencyklopedien Cycle (which translates to something like Seasonal Encyclopedia) function more or less as the title suggests. A few years ago, after completing what is likely his masterwork My Struggle, a six-volume series of novels based on an interpretative view of his life (and I have to say having read the first three, that while they do focus on a lot of minutia, they are much more structures, focused, and […]

A Lullaby for your little one

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This is a cozy book. It has cozy illustrations with warm colors but at the same time are cool to the eye. It has cozy words that tell a memory and cozy words that tell about the here and now as well. The best part is the family is a biracial family. However, it is not “in your face” as it is “just there” as “normal.” Yet the traditional nuclear family is there. Natalie Reif Ziarnik has created a lovely, cozy book that is perfect […]

One Summer Evening

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Summer Evening by Walter de la Mare has a “grab you cover.” While it needed more text these illustrations are gorgeous, but the lack of text does take away from things. Even if it just had text more sprinkled in then it has, would have made this book perfect. A family is out and about having an evening picnic. And when the children notice the cat chasing a mouse, they follow it pass the dog and the other animals of the farm. Mostly a wordless […]

Summertiiiiiiiime and the living is drearyyyyyy (for women)

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I am a fan of Edith Wharton. I enjoyed Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and House of Mirth. Her writing is straightforward and is a time capsule of the turn of the century. She paints stark and vivid stories centering on women and the ways that they are boxed in by the circumstances of the time. Though she often focuses on the tiresome lives of the wealthy, Summer follows Charity, an orphan of mountain people, who is living her life of few opportunities in a […]



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