You were a previous Cannonballer, right? Welcome back! How many Cannonballs have you participated in?
This is my second Cannonball, after a looooong break since my first one. I didn’t hit my first one, but I read >100 books last year without the review part, so I’m feeling good about making it this time!
You’re going to be stranded on an island and can only pick one genre/author’s books to take with you. What/who do you pick?
Does “farce” count as a genre? If I get to say “farce” and bring PG Wodehouse and Gideon Defoe and Hitchhikers and try for the 200th time to get into Pratchett, that’s my pick. It does feel like cheating though, so I’ll say Wodehouse for the author and SF for the genre.
What book do you like to recommend to new friends?
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe. THIS BOOK HAS EVERYTHING. Pirates! Monkeys! Queen Victoria! Ham! And best of all (if you like it) sequels!!
What’s your favorite book-to-movie adaptation?
My favorite has to be the Ehle/Firth Pride and Prejudice — it’s a miniseries, of course, but at ~5 hours I think it’s about the “right” length for an Austen adaptation, where the Winslet/Thompson S&S and ESPECIALLY the Joe Wright P&P had to cut corners. I like the corners. And I especially like the space to experience the smaller moments and hear about Lady Catherine’s chimneypiece and the pigs getting into the garden and making the bonnets up nicely but What Will It Matter if the regiment is not in town, and Lizzy *is* kind of an idiot about Wickham when she meets him and is Colonel Brandon flirting with Lizzy or just bored out of his mind and and and … and you get those parts a lot more in a more spacious adaptation. So I like it.
What was the last new recipe you tried?
Every winter I get super into soups and this winter is no exception — this eggplant soup turned out GREAT and fills you right up with warmth and gumption, highly recommended.
