Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About Zirza

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I am an English teacher from the Low Countries. Like everyone else I aspire to one day write a Booker Prize Winner, but until then I contend my self with reading stuff and writing about it. I try to keep the bitchiness to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. In my spare time I enjoy complaining about the weather and sleeping. I lack the attention span for good books and the tolerance for bad ones. I am stuck in literary purgatory. Hey, at least it's warm here. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Zirza's Quick Questions interview.)

Zirza's Reviews:

Teenage Kicks

The Girls by Emma Cline

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It’s 1969, and 14 year old Evie is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Her parents have divorced and she lives with her early middle aged mother who is out on a self-search quest full of enemas, wheatgrass and horoscopes. Evie underperforms at school and is set to go to boarding school after the summer, and she spends her summer hanging around with her one true friend, whom she dislikes, obsessively reading magazines and following their hammy beauty routines. Evie is obsessed with […]

March of the DINKs

The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish

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London fortysomethings Jamie and Clare lead a happy life, at least on the surface; they’re financially stable, Clare has a good job, they live in an expensive house in a prosperous area in London and they’re enjoying life the way wealthy people with no children do. But all is not well; Jamie is stuck in a dead-end job and Clare is getting increasingly fed up with him. When they meet young, dazzling couple Kit and Melia, they seize the opportunity to become friends, but all […]

Books and Spooks

Silverview by John Le Carré

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33 year old Julian Lawndsley (yes, he’s British, why do you ask?) has had enough of life as a hardcore stock broker in the City and decides to start anew in a nameless seaside town, where he opens a book shop. He’s not an avid reader and doesn’t know a lot about books, so when a quaint, older man named Edward starts frequenting his shop, offering him advice, he seizes the opportunity. He finds himself enjoying the older man’s company, so when Edward asks him […]

Of Mice and Metaphors

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

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In a small Warwickshire village, an eleven year old succumbs to the plague. The year is 1596; the boy’s name is Hamnet. His father, who remains nameless throughout the book, goes on to write a famous play about a young Danish prince, while his mother stays behind with the boy’s sisters, trying to pick up the pieces of their life.  Hamnet is about a side of Shakespeare we rarely get a glimpse of, mostly because not a lot is known about it save for a […]

A Horse is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course

The Institute by Stephen King

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Luke Ellis is gifted. Not only does he have a very high IQ but he’s also mature for his age. Even though he’s only twelve he knows how to think things through, how to plan ahead. And sometimes, when he’s upset, things move around on their own account. He’s set for MIT with the help of his loving parents when a group of intruders sneak into his house, kill his parents and take him. He wakes up in a building deep inside the forests of […]

Full Cannonball, Total Banger

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

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Alright, maybe not a total banger – more like a satisfyingly slow burn – but I wanted to finish my Cannonball Read with something I’ve wanted to read for a while and it ended up being this. I was planning on reading it someday, so when I came across a copy in at a thrift store (cost me about three bucks in conjunction with The Little Friend) I figured fate was trying to tell me something.  I was working as a lowly book shop employee […]



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