Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

TFW The Trenches of WWI Beat Life at Oxford, Any Day

Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves

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Bingo Square Shelfie Good-Bye to All That is rather a “Boy’s Own” version of, Robert Graves’ (the Irish-British poet) account of his public school and war years – WWI, that is.  Schooling started at Charterhouse School and continued at Oxford, and Graves did not enjoy any bit of it.  As soon as the War started, Graves signed up, as an officer, and never looked back.  War, it turned out, was far more his element. Graves was one of the several British poets involved in WWI, […]

“I think I saw our ghosts”: a devastating modern WWI novel

Regeneration by Pat Barker

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Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls was one of my favorite novels of 2018; I read it after teaching The Iliad for the first time, fascinated by the idea of a novel that told the events of the epic primarily from a feminine point of view: namely, that of Briseis, the Trojan captive that Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel over. It was also my first introduction to Pat Barker in general, and was I ever appreciative of that when I learned that Barker had also written a […]

cbr12bingo – The Roaring 20s (and two more “bingos”)

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

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Oh, Hemingway. You dirty old dog. I have a soft-spot for the Lost Generation, and a sentimental attachment to The Sun Also Rises. While plenty of this novel- and his writing in general- has aged poorly, there is still value to be found. Hemingway was plenty of things as both an author and a man, but here I will choose to focus on the story and the broken people within- and the story of my attachment to this book. My first read was back in […]

Lady Spies Rule

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

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I grabbed this book during my last in-person visit to the library where I was panic grabbing books to stock up prior to the closure. I’ve been a big fan of Reese’s book club and dove back to the beginning: this was the second of her picks (I had already read and enjoyed her first pick, “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.” This book was interesting but took a lot for me to get through, which I think was a combo of it’s hard to focus […]

A Stiff Upper Lip and a Blind Eye

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Oh, Mr. Stevens. A tragic hero if ever there was one. As a butler to a great house of Britain, he kept his eyes to the floor while the ravages of post-WWI Europe came to a boiling point in the halls of his dear Darlington Hall. Kazuo Ishiguro is a master of quiet suffering. His characters come to slow, stark, and utterly devastating conclusions just a moment before the enormity of their despair hits the reader. The Remains of the Day is arguably  his most celebrated […]

Come for the Historical Lady Police Offer, Stay for the Cozy Mystery

An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen by Liz Freeland

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Full disclosure, I requested this book based on its description and did not realize it was the third book in a series! It’s a testament to the author that I didn’t feel out of sorts reading this novel out of order as she did a good job ensuring any plot points from the first books were subtly explained or inconsequential. Louise, our main character, is a policewoman in New York City right before the United States enters World War I. Louise has German immigrant parents […]



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