Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It was nine thirty on Christmas Eve.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer

No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase

Time and Tide by Frank Conroy

Nature Poem by Tommy Pico

A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow

Inside Stories by Ben H Winters

The Dark Web by Geoff White

Latin History for Morons by John Leguizamo

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London

Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn

Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie

Inadvertent by Karl Ove Knausgard

This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich

Dr Doolittle by Hugh Lofting

Texts from Jane Eyre by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Tom Sawyer Detective by Mark Twain

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Here’s a whole bunch of kind of (Sorry) short reviews for short books! Pandemic reading!!!     The Woman in Black – 3/5 Stars I still think it remains a little silly that this movie had Daniel Radcliffe in it. He was too fresh off of Harry Potter and hadn’t yet made his real transition into adult movies. I think his show “The Young Doctor’s Notebook” was a more successful vehicle for him as it placed him in a transitional role. Anyway, I mention all […]

IDK my BFF Jane?

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I went back and forth about reviewing this book. Considering I spend most of my times reviewing nonfiction tomes, it felt weird to review such a short, fun bookette. But Texts From Jane Eyre has become one of my go-to recommendations. It’s an inside joke to all of my fellow book nerds, that yeah, Scarlett O’Hara would totally have texted that annoying crap. The premise is simple enough-what if classic characters from fiction were able to text? Although it seems like a one-note joke, I […]

No One Is Safe

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I don’t think I can reach the 250 word quota for this review. Just go read this book. It’s hilarious. No book is safe, no character left unscathed. Ortberg’s ability to hone in on the character’s personality and then twist it into the 21st century is ridiculously brilliant and packs a punch that shades between laughing out loud and the irresistible urge to shout “BURN!” to the character on the page. My two all-time favorite sections are her rip on the American Girl series and […]

“why did you turn my friends into pigs i don’t know maybe the real question is why are your friends so turn-into-pigsable”

Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters by Daniel M. Lavery

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I apologize now, but this will not be a long review. If I could get away with saying: “I laughed, a lot, read it now” I would. Because this book really is a very funny, very witty, highly sarcastic look at all of your favorite writings and writers from an absurd angle. And a joy to read. But, that is not enough to qualify as a review so off I go to attempt to explain more. I bought this book on a lark. I read […]

DID YOU LEAVE BECAUSE OF MY ATTIC WIFE IS THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT

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If you’re ever having a bad day, you could do worse than self-medicating with maybe a hot bath or some hot cocoa or ice cream or soft pajamas or episodes of Gilmore Girls, but maybe also think about adding Texts From Jane Eyre in there as well. There were parts of this book that made me laugh until tears squeezed out of my eyeholes. There were also other parts, mostly to do with classics and mythology, that made me glad I have my friendly Google […]

I hope you appreciate how I didn’t just quote the entire book at you

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Oh people, how do I even start reviewing this book? I’m pretty sure I devoured the whole thing in less than two hours total (in between running errands, meeting up with friends, working and other stuff). I can tell you that for the bits that worked for me (about 75% of the book), I laughed so hard on occasion that my abs hurt. If I’d actually got the final 25%, this book would have been 5 stars, for sure. I kept quoting bits out loud […]



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