Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About ElCicco

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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. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ElCicco's Quick Questions interview.)

ElCicco's Reviews:

“…believing in ghosts — that’s believing that love never dies.”

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

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Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses is a ghost story, a history, and a testament to the power of hope and love. This is only my second Amy Tan novel, but I must say, I am riveted by her storytelling. In this novel, as with The Kitchen God’s Wife, Tan manages to tell stories of the past that have a direct relationship to the present. This time, Tan reaches 100+ years into the past, to 1865, as she tells the story of Nunumu, the peasant […]

“Writing is the most important thing.”

The Notebook by Agota Kristof

The Proof by Agota Kristof

The Third Lie by Agota Kristof

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This trilogy by Hungarian writer Agota Kristof is simply amazing. I read through the three novels quickly, and I’m still reeling from the story she tells about twin brothers who endured violence and privation in WWII, separation during the Cold War, and a troubling reunion afterward. Certainly, these novels can be read as the story of a divided and reunified Europe. They were written in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Soviet Union was in dissolution and the wall came down in Berlin. How […]

This was a fun surprise!

Fence: Striking Distance by Sarah Rees Brennan

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This is an original novel based on C.S.Pacat’s Fence comic series, illustrated by Johanna The Mad. This YA novel came to me courtesy of fellow Cannonballer CoffeeShop Reader, who sent it as part of the 2020 Holiday Book Exchange. I know she has reviewed the original series of graphic novels upon which it is based, and I just want to say again THANK YOU FOR THIS! I had never heard of the series or this author before, but I am definitely in for the follow […]

“Silence warps everything.”

The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys

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I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a PhD in history, specializing in the USSR, and back in the day, I taught courses like Western Civ and the 20th Century. I thought I knew my European history pretty well, but a YA novel just showed me a glaring gap in my knowledge. The Fountains of Silence is set in Spain, 1957, and it revealed to me how unaware I was of the oppressive fascist regime that existed in Spain until the death of […]

Have you ever thought of books as “small flattish boxes… packed with mystery and threat”?

A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell

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“Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.” I have to say, I found it weird that Ruth Rendell would start a murder mystery by eliminating the mystery in the very first sentence. It’s been a while since I read any Rendell, but I have always found her murder mysteries to be absorbing and unsettling, which is where the fun is. One would never describe her mysteries as “cozy.” The fact that we readers know the who and the why […]

“…isn’t it simpler to believe that we are all of us what we assume to be?”

The Lady Vanishes by Ethel Lina White

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It never occurred to me that the Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes, which I have not seen, was based upon a novel. I forget how I even came across this one, but I like a good mystery and figured this would not disappoint. Turns out, this mystery is an amazingly suspenseful thriller, with the threat of evil and psychological imbalance on nearly every page. The Lady Vanishes, originally published in 1936 as The Wheel Spins, keeps both the reader and the story’s protagonist guessing until […]



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