Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About esme

CBR14 ParticipantCBR13 participantCBR11 participantCBR 9

Loves to read. Loves to travel. Doesn't get to do either enough.

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Longing for the sound of an electric guitar

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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I finally put this on my reading list after one of the CBR13 happy hours. Someone mentioned that Emily St. John Mandel had a new book coming out that they were looking forward to, and somehow I pulled that thread and made my way back to Station Eleven. I had been aware of it before that conversation, yet the blurb had never struck my fancy, likely because I have a very complicated relationship with dystopian fiction. Frankly, and as has been noted on this site […]

Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

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I was in the mood for escape and The Folk of the Air series really delivered for me. It is a flawed series, and I’ll mention a bit of that as I look at the individual books, but I found it a delicious treat at the end of some pretty long days. The Cruel Prince, the first book in the series, introduces us to Jude, Taryn, Vivienne, Cardan, and other key players who feature throughout the trilogy. Jude, Taryn, and Vivi are children when we […]

“Archer…dressed in the evening because he thought it cleaner and more comfortable to do so”

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

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This is my first review of the year. I have been reading a lot, and enjoying what I read, but I’m just not ready to think about what I read. I was partway through The Age of Innocence when I realized this was a re-read, though from a decade or so ago. We meet Newland Archer (what a name!), a New York society gentleman in his early 20s, as he mostly sleepwalks through society – getting engaged to an appropriate ingénue, moving from home to […]

She had been meant to die, yet she’d cut her way out of that fate and back to the world she loved.

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

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With this review, I will finish my 1/4 CBR, so I am feeling very proud right now! I read The Widows of Malabar Hill some time ago – I mentioned sitting by the side of a lake in northern North Dakota in a previous review, and that is where I read this, as well. However, I had read quite a bit by Sujata Massey before – she had a series about a biracial detective, Rei Shimura, which often featured travel to Japan, and had pretty […]

Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

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I read this book earlier this year as I sat by a lake in northern North Dakota. Now it is gray and chilly here in Memphis, but I still have the flavor of reading Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman, in my mind – sun setting late, a few leisurely boats motoring by, and a hummingbird hitting the nectar for the last time. Seraphina is a ungainly young woman living in the kingdom of Goredd. She has a knack for music and mathematics and lurking at the […]

I can see a better time When all our dreams come true

The Stonekeeper's Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

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Amazingly, I only discovered that I could download graphic novels to my library app a few weeks ago, and my son and I have been tearing through some pretty good ones since then. He mentioned that they read the first book in the Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi, The Stonekeeper, at school, so we sought the second one. Thus, I went into reading this book with an 8 year old’s synopsis of the first book. Briefly, Emily has inherited a stone amulet that confers power, […]



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