Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Elder LOTR/Holmes fan girl/writer since forever. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: elderberrywine's Quick Questions interview.)

elderberrywine's Reviews:

Magnificent Foolishness

The Reserve by Russell Banks

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      There was a movie director in the 1950s who specialized in glossy, noir-adjacent melodramas featuring the gorgeous rich in amazing locations (lake-adjacent!), Douglas Sirk.  Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, and Imitation of Life are a few of his works, and they generally starred actors such as Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman.  That was absolutely the vibe this book gave me from the start.  I hereby nominate Rock Hudson, Barbara Stanwyck (she does gorgeous rich crazy lady so well), and Henry Fonda […]

Hard Times for These Times

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

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So, Hard Times.  Or to give the book its full title, Hard Times for These Times.  And has there ever been a more perfect title for These Days? If you are unfamiliar with Charles Dickens, besides, perhaps, A Christmas Carol, there are a few things you ought to know about the man.  The man is, nearly always, On A Mission.  (OK, the Pickwick Papers is just plain fun.)  He’s from the Victorian era, newspapers have just been, more or less, invented, and his books are […]

Girlfriend Had a LIFE.

The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives by Diane Johnson

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That’s her on the cover, lower left hand corner. The first Mrs. George Meredith, nee Mary Ellen Peacock. This biography, written in 1972 by early feminist Diane Johnson, is wonderfully quirky and fascinating. Mary Ellen, to give her the only name that was truly hers, was not famous in her own right, but was what I’d call famous-adjacent. Her father was the Romantic poet Thomas Love Peacock, who, whilst rambling about Wales in search of dramatic scenery, met Jane Gryffydh, daughter of a vicar of […]

Frozen Meets Fiddler on the Roof

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This was a highly entertaining mashup, drawing from several familiar sources, but with very much its own unique story to tell.  The fairy tale influences range from The Snow Queen to Rumpelstiltskin but with the addition of Tsarist Russia’s history with its Jewish population tossed in too.  But the core of the story has to do with three very different women who are each unwillingly matched up with a husband who is repulsive to them, and the means they each take to solve their dilemma. […]

Hear the Fearsome War Cry of the River Otter! Ic-yang!

Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson

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Set in rural Devon and written in 1928, this is the life story of Tarka, the river otter, written as an unsentimental biography, from birth to death.  Williamson had an unusual talent of presenting the life of a wild creature just as is.  Well, there are some names, but that is only so that one can distinguish one creature from another.  Otherwise, they are very much not anthropomorphized.   The language, though, is a delight.  It’s not written in a dialect, per se, but rather […]

Ladies of the Canyons flashback

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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  What a blast from the past.  Spoiler alert, Daisy Jones and I am the same age, and living the 1970’s LA life whilst in your twenties was some good times.  The music was all around, in an LA-centric way I have not seen since.  (Still here.)  The clubs were rocking, but I did not have that kind of money, although the boyfriend and I managed to swing tickets once for the Universal Amphitheater and Linda Ronstadt in all her boy scout uniform glory (damn, […]



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