Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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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, […]

Rising Tides

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

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Dominic Salt and his three children (teenagers Raff and Fen, and their nine-year-old brother Orly) are the last living people on Shearwater Island. Dominic is the caretaker for a research lab and a seed bank housing emergency reserves of seeds for every plant species on Earth, in case of apocalypse. It’s not an idle threat in the world of Charlotte McConaghy’s novel. The waters, always rough, have lately been rising, and are threatening to swallow the island entirely. The lab has been shuttered and the […]

Second Read, First Listen

Long Island by Colm Toibin

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I read this book a couple of years ago when it was published, but I wanted to give the audiobook a listen after finding out it was done by Jessie Buckley, an actress whose voice I find very appealing. Last year I did a similar thing with Toibin’s Brooklyn, listening to the new edition of the audiobook narrated by Saoirse Ronan. What won’t I do for talented and lovely Irish women? Brooklyn is one of my favorite novels, and listening to it in Ronan’s voice […]

Woo Pig Sooie

Come and Get It by Kiley Reid

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Come and Get It, by Kiley Reid takes place over one semester at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Most of the book takes place in the scholarship/transfer student dorm there. And the main cast of characters includes a few RAs and residents of the dorm, as well as a visiting professor/writer from the north. I know this book won’t be for everyone, but aside from a couple of issues, it was very much for me. One, I found much of the book to be […]

Charming, but incomplete

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol.1 by Beth Brower

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This was a book club read that I probably wouldn’t have read on my own, if only because it’s part of a series with 8 books in it, and that is too large a commitment for me. However, it was charming and witty, and I’m glad I read it. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion is written in the form of fictional diary entries by the titular characters. Set in London at some time in the 19th century, it tells the story of twenty-year-old […]

Love is in the Cards

Heart the Lover by Lily King

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I don’t remember a ton about Writers and Lovers, Lily King’s prior novel featuring the protagonist Casey Peabody. Heart the Lover starts before the events of Writers and Lovers and ends after, making it sort of a prequel and sequel in one. At the start, Casey is a university student, majoring in English and working her way through college after giving up her scholarship by quitting the golf team. She meets two brainy, literary boys in Sam and Yash, best friends who live together in […]



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