Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Silly Ol’ Bear

Winnie’s Great War by Lindsay Mattick

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Having read the picture books about the true story behind Winnie-the-Pooh, (one also created by Lindsay Mattick and Josh Greenhut and illustrated by Sophie Blackall) I figured I had a pretty good handle on the story before going into the high second-to-third grade novel, Winnie’s Great War. I will say I liked. But will add, your experience will vary from mine. Shoot, my experience varied from page to page. Mattick is a decedent of the Captain Harry Colebourn of the story. One night her son […]

The black bat night approached and enfolded her in its wings

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For the past 15+ years, I’ve been the target audience for the Man Booker awards: literary fiction snob leaning to British Commonwealth authors. Though I have been branching out into other genres over the last few years, I still look to the Booker long- and shortlists for recommendations and usually pick up at least a few each year. For some reason, I haven’t looked much into other prizes until this year when I realized the Baileys (formerly Orange) prize lists would be a great resource […]

Timing is Everything

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Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania is another piece of historical non-fiction by Erik Larson, who brought us The Devil in the White City. It isn’t quite as gripping a read as its predecessor, but it’s definitely worth your time. Told from about four points of view (the German U-boat that sinks her, the passengers on the Lusitania and her captain, President Woodrow Wilson, and Room 40 of the British Intelligence Service), the book addresses the build-up to the US’s entrance into The Great […]

Little Too Many Ideas

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I took a stab at something newly published and completely outside of my comfort zone. In all honesty, it wasn’t a total wash; “Little Nothing” comes in at a solid 3. Pavla is born a dwarf to agrarian parents living somewhere in Eastern Europe right before the outbreak of World War I. The industrial age is just beginning to dawn on her small farming community, and there and many of the villages surrounding her town still conduct daily activity with a fairly Medieval mindset, meaning […]

The easiest way is always to work through a suitable man

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Man, I needed this book, and I don’t mean that in any particularly deep way. It’s just that the last couple of months, I’ve been deep into the Stephen King, and the Naomi Novik, and then unexpectedly took the deep dive into Red Rising. All of which has been absolutely outstanding, but it’s been kind of super rich reading. A very dear friend recommended The Summer Before the War, and so I put it on my library hold list… and that very same night it […]

It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary

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I’ve honestly never had the slightest interest in World War I, and yet somehow I managed to read two books about it in a row. Maisie Dobbs is a servant who spends her evenings sneaking into her master’s library to read. When she’s discovered, the lady of the house decides that Maisie’s intelligence is worth nurturing, and so she sponsors her education. Everything’s going along swimmingly for Maisie, until World War I starts and she decides to leave university to become a nurse. She goes to […]



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