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:

In the Garden of Eden

Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

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Cbr12bingo Orange, BINGO (color diagonal) Bitter Orange is a rather dark and twisted tale, perfect for those who enjoyed Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen. Set during the summer of 1969, this novel features Lyntons, an old abandoned English home in the country, full of secrets and perhaps ghosts; Cara and Peter, an attractive and lively couple who are temporarily in residence there; and a single, middle-aged woman named Frances who also spends the summer there and acts as our narrator, reviewing the events of that time from […]

I remember the Russians

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

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Cbr12bingo Nostalgia This book, set in late the 1970s Soviet Union and published in 1981, marks the time of my teenaged years, a time when my personal interest in the Russians began to grow (leading to a long stint in graduate school and a PhD in Russian/Soviet history). Gorky Park was made into a movie (which I never saw) and Martin Cruz Smith went on to write a number of Arkady Renko detective/thriller novels. I think I might have read one of them (Red Square) […]

“Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators …. But they don’t carry it the way victims do.“

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisenger, Steven Scott, Harmony Becker

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Cbr12bingo Shelfie This graphic novel geared toward young readers is an eye opening first hand account of the Takei family’s experience in the US’s Japanese internment camps during WWII. World renowned actor George Takei relates his childhood memories of being uprooted and shipped across the country with his family and reveals his subsequent struggle to come to terms with the injustice and trauma of those years. Even though many of us may have heard about the camps before (thanks in part to the hard work […]

Dublin Soul

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

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Cbr12bingo Music, BINGO ~ 4 corners and center square Also an “adaptation” possibility Irish writer Roddy Doyle’s first novel (published in 1987) is set in 1980’s Dublin and centers on a group of working class teens/20-somethings (and one geezer) who come together to form “the world’s hardest working band,” The Commitments. The Commitments is a short, humorous novel that tracks the group’s rocky development and ambitions. Its lively colloquial dialog makes the characters come alive and keeps the novel moving at a rapid clip. Jimmy […]

2 Perspectives, 1 Great Story

I’m Not Dying With You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

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Cbr12bingo Friendship I’m Not Dying With You Tonight is a perfect book for the times we live in and would make a great pick for a book club, a community read, middle school and high school students, and their parents. Lena and Campbell are seniors at an Atlanta high school, and other than that they have little in common. They would probably have never had more than cursory interaction with one another if not for the fight and ensuing riot that started at a football […]

“… it’s not we who control money, it’s the money that controls us.”

Ghachar Ghochar: A Novel by Vivek Shanbhag

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Cbr12bingo Uncannon — but this could also fit for “money” or perhaps “debut” if “English language debut” counts for that category From a review in The Guardian: “Ghachar Ghochar is the English-language debut of a writer already established as a leading figure in both the pan-Indian and Kannada-language literary scenes. Once again, reading beyond our tiny borders shows us what we’ve been missing, and proves the necessity of translation for a dynamic literary culture…” I first heard about this 2017 novel a few months ago […]



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