Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About xoxoxoe

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I am an artist, blogger, and culture critic. I write about movies, books, television, pop culture—old and new—with a feminine/feminist perspective. sometimes I post pictures of the kid, too. Check out my blog, xoxoxo e, for all of my recent interests, exploits, and opinionated opinions. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: xoxoxoe's Quick Questions interview.)

xoxoxoe's Reviews:

The (No Spoilers) Spoils of Poynton

The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James

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The Spoils of Poynton … should have been a short story rather than a novel. One can (almost) see the whole plot in the first few chapters. The simple set-up is this – Mrs. Gereth has lovingly and carefully collected art and antiques her entire adult married life with her husband. After his death it is discovered that Mr. Gereth has bequeathed the whole kit and caboodle, along with the stately home she has lived in her entire married life, to their only son Owen, […]

The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

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I recently decided to re-read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (it was my choice for my book group). It was as fun as I remembered. Carter’s sexy takes on traditional fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Puss in Boots” is at times over-the-top in its prose, humor, and horror – which suits her feminist takes on damsels in all sorts of distress perfectly. She delivers a great vampire tale, “The Lady of the House of Love,” too.  But I think […]

This Mess is Pretty Neat

Mess by Michael Chessler

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The colorful cover of the book and its glitzy (and ditzy) Hollywood backdrop easily lure the reader in, for a quick beach or travel read. The chapters are set up as vignettes to showcase various Hollywood types and their messy lives – and how heroine Jane, a professional organizer (think a cross between a celebrity assistant and a devotee of lifestyle guru Marie Kondo), can brave the traffic of Los Angeles freeways and twisty/turny roads in the Hollywood Hills to save them all. Author Mike […]

Death (and other Nonsense) on the Nile

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

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My mom and I shared a love of Ancient Egypt, mythology and archaeology. She was a big fan of Elizabeth Peters mysteries, and I have had a few of the paperbacks from her mystery novel collection buried in my to-read piles for years. I finally decided to dig them out and give Peters a try. The first novel in the series, Crocodile on the Sandbank, introduces readers to her Victorian-era heroine, Amelia Peabody. Amelia is a no-nonsense, feisty woman who has also inherited an interest […]

The Night Stalker … In Print

The Kolchak Papers: The Original Novels by Jeff Rice

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I like to find the original literary sources for movies that I like (see past reviews of Strangers on a Train, Rosemary’s Baby, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), so I was happy to find out that an old television show from my childhood, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, actually started life out as a book. The Kolchak Papers: The Original Novels includes the first two novels that introduced intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak, who has a flair for detecting the supernatural. They first debuted in 1970 and are now […]

Do You want to Build a Snowman (I Hope Not)

The Snowman by Jo Nesbø

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I usually like to start a series from the beginning, but I had already seen the movie The Snowman with Michael Fassbender, so decided to just try the novel by Jo Nesbø and see how they compared. It probably would have been better if I had done those two things in reverse order, but that’s how it was. This is the seventh book in Nesbø’s series featuring Norwegian Detective Harry Hole. Harry, like all good, classic detectives, has his issues – he’s an introvert, but […]



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