Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


About elderberrywine

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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:

Whisper Sweet Nothings About Chopin All Day Long

The Unforgivable and Other Writings by Cristina Campo

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This collection of short stories was the product of an unusual author.  Campo, born in Italy in 1923, had been a sickly child (heart condition) and grew up secluded by her wealthy family in a villa in Tuscany.  In the 1960s, she moved to Rome, and lived in a convent for long periods of time until her untimely death in 1977. Some of her earlier work borders a little too closely to twee for my taste, and I do not share her enthusiasm for Catholic […]

Must Confess, Arty People Are Not My Tribe.

Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley

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Told alternately in the present and the past, Late in the Day follows the lives of two arty and fairly wealthy London couples, Alex and Christine, and Zachary and Lydia.  The quartet turns into a trio in no time with the sudden death of Zachary from a heart attack.  Christine is a fairly well-known artist, and her husband Alex a primary school headmaster, having given up an earlier attempt to become a writer.  Lydia has been Christine’s closest friend from their childhood days, and Zach […]

Everybody Hates This Guy. Can We Just Pretend the Obvious Murder Was an Accident?

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

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There is a river that runs through it.  It is the (fictional) Alabaster River, and the town is Jewel, Minnesota.  It is only a decade after the end of WWII, and many men returned home significantly changed.  The town is celebrating Memorial Day when a body is discovered in the river.  The victim is Joseph Quinn, belligerent wealthy landowner and renowned drinker.  He’d been known to occasionally go down to camp overnight by the river.  Perhaps he got drunk and fell in?  Little hard to […]

If You are Hiring Perry Mason? Just Spill It, Sister.

The Case of the Lazy Lover by Erle Stanley Gardner

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Holy moral ambiguity, Batman!  Turns out the actual murderer never gets charged, and we are all fine with that.  Also, Perry’s client did what most of them do, and never really laid the facts out to him.  True, he’s not going to represent them if he’s convinced they are guilty, but the coy runaround never works in their favor, and I can’t blame Perry for getting a little ticked off.  They are usually trying to protect  and plot come out gradually, as Perry tries to […]

Shoulda Stuck to Cars

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin

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This was pretty amazing; I had never heard of this!  In 1927, when Henry Ford was one of the richest people in the world, he bought up over 5000 sq. miles of Amazonian jungle, near a river that fed into the Amazon, near its mouth on the Atlantic Ocean.  The purpose was to establish a rubber plantation; that being one of the raw ingredients that he needed for his autos that he couldn’t obtain domestically.  At the time, most of the world’s rubber production was […]

War. Hunh. What’s It Good For.

The Village of Ben Suc by Jonathan Schell

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Since my high school days, I have been a stanch advocate of magazines.  Fashion, of course, at least back in the day.  (Ah, Seventeen, you were a teen age dream.)  But many others as well.  Fought my way through many a Scientific American.  Roamed the world with National Geographic.  All the generic news magazines, (was definitely Team Time) as well as many of the more partisan sort, although many wussed out as years went by.  But my one tried and true was The New Yorker.  […]



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