Cannonball Read 10

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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ElCicco

Married, mom of two, history PhD, feminist. I've been participating in Cannonball Read since CBR4. I love to read, and writing reviews keeps me from reading without thinking. I feel like I owe it to the authors who entertain me to savor their creations. It's like slowing down and enjoying a delicious meal instead of bolting your food.

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ElCicco's Reviews:

The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

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Birthday/cbr10bingo  Sylvia Plath was born Oct. 27, 1932. Bingo #2 Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman’s experience of depression and mental illness, her time in an institution and her slow journey back to wellness. It is also a commentary on the suffocating life of a young woman who wants more than life seems to offer her because of her class and gender. The Bell Jar was published in the UK in 1963, just before Plath committed suicide. The Bell Jar is the story of Esther Greenwood as told by Esther. She is a […]

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11/15/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:45 |

When white women cry, people die

The Mere Wife: A Novel by Maria Dahvana Headley

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#cbr10bingo So Shiny The only reason I read Beowulf for my last selection was because I wanted to read The Mere Wife, a 2018 novel which I had heard was an innovative take on Beowulf from the point of view of the monster Grendel’s mother, and I wanted to have the epic poem fresh in mind for this. I read Madeline Miller’s Circe earlier this year and loved her imagining of Circe’s point of view vis-a-vis the events of The Odyssey, and initial reviews of The Mere Wife sounded promising. I was not disappointed. The Mere Wife is a startling […]

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11/8/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:44 |

Award Winner #cbr10bingo

Beowulf by Seamus Heaney, trans.

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#cbr10bingo Award Winner Heaney’s Beowulf won the Whitbread Award Beowulf is a classic epic poem that many students read in high school or college. Featuring brave warriors, terrifying monsters, good leaders and bad, Beowulf has been translated by many different scholars and has even been put into graphic novel form. This review will focus on the widely praised translation by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, which won the Whitbread Award. Beowulf is set about 1000 years ago in Denmark and Sweden. This is a feudal world, where kings at the top of the pyramid are meant to protect their vassals, and […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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10/30/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:43 |

Not My Wheelhouse … BINGO!

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

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#cbr10bingo Not My Wheelhouse This book was a gift from Malin during last year’s CBR book exchange. I had mentioned that I don’t read much in the Romance genre but would be interested in trying, and she sent The Hating Game, a favorite among Cannonballers.  *Note: the first square that I filled on my bingo card was with a book from Malin, and the first review I wrote for CBR10 was for a book from Malin. Next bingo cards needs a square called “Malin Recommends”! If I am honest, I have to admit that I consciously avoid the romance genre. […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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10/22/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:42 |

I Believe Her

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

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#cbr10bingo Listicles  Educated has been on the New York Times Combined Print and E-book Nonfiction Best Seller list for over 33 weeks. It is also one of Time Magazine’s Best Memoirs of 2018 So Far Educated: A Memoir is Tara Westover’s riveting account of how she went from growing up home schooled in a survivalist family in Idaho to PhD student of History at Cambridge. Westover is the youngest of seven children raised by parents whose goal was to live “off the grid” and who believed that the coming of the end times was immanent. Much of the book focuses […]

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Purchase Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover or any item from amazon via our link.

Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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10/14/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:41 |

World War I Novels Never End Happily

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

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#cbr10bingo This is the End The Ghost Road is the third and final volume in Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. Set during WWI in England, the trilogy tells the story of both real and fictional characters trying to make sense of a senseless war. The first book focused on the patients at Craiglockhart Hospital, an asylum for soldiers suffering from shell shock and being treated so as to be sent back to the front. Book two centered on the fictional character Billy Prior, a soldier recovering from both physical and psychological injury in an England in the throes of raging homophobia […]

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Purchase The Ghost Road by Pat Barker or any item from amazon via our link.

Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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10/4/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:40 |

Psychological Conflict Management

The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

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In volume one of Pat Barker’s award winning Regeneration Trilogy, readers experienced life in a hospital for English soldiers suffering from “war neurosis” (PTSD) during WWI. Barker uses both fictional and real historical characters (Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Dr. Rivers) to show the trauma of war for soldiers expected to heal and return to action, and the impact of their experiences upon the doctor treating them. At the end of that novel, Rivers’ patients are being released back to action, which was his goal, but he is questioning whether or not this is right. Sassoon’s anti-war ideas are beginning to […]

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Purchase The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker or any item from amazon via our link.

Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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9/28/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:39 |

Not just another WWI novel

Regeneration by Pat Barker

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#cbr10bingo And So It Begins Pat Barker’s Booker-nominated first volume of the Regeneration Trilogy takes place during World War I and, unsurprisingly, deals with the trauma and horror of that conflict. What sets her work apart from other WWI novels, however, is that the action takes place not at the front but at an asylum for British soldiers suffering from what we would now call PTSD. Many of the characters in Regeneration are real people who really knew each other in London and at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh: the poets Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Robert Graves; the doctors Rivers, […]

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Purchase Regeneration by Pat Barker or any item from amazon via our link.

Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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9/18/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:38 |


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