Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

A friendly guide to owning a car

Mechanic Shop Femme’s Guide to Car Ownership: Uncomplicating Cars for All of Us by Chaya M. Milchtein

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When I was 14, my dad told me that he would teach me to drive on his 1974 Volkswagen van, but first I had to read Zen and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, and we would then take parts of the van apart so I understood how it worked and how to fix it. This was in the ’90s, and, owing to a combination of eternal coolness and bad financial blows, that van was his beloved daily driver, not a restored show piece. The way […]

Not Rebecca, Not Mexican Gothic

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

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I had heard of Isabel Cañas’s The Hacienda as Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, but in Mexico. When I found that it wasn’t literally a Rebecca retelling in Mexico, I put it down because I expected Mrs. Danvers, not priests. This probably says more about me than the book. But I did intend to check it back out when my expectations calmed down. (If I saw all the Mexican Gothic comparisons beforehand, I might have finished it the first time.) This review shouldn’t be about […]

Challenging Things Happening to Horrible People

What a Way to Go by Bella Mackie

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Best for: People who don’t mind reading about horrible people, and who like a bit of schadenfreude. In a nutshell: Anthony – a very rich finance dude – dies at his 60th birthday gala. Was he murdered? Did he take his own life? Is something else going on? Worth quoting: “He’d always thought I was an idiot. It’s a mistake men often make, thinking their wives are stupid when they’re actually just full of rage.” “Who are these people who walk through the world with […]

“One of Harold Nicolson’s many endearing traits was to invent occasions brought about by some preposterous and improbable action on his part.”

Harold Nicolson: A Biography (Volume I: 1886-1929) by James Lees-Milne

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One of my continued passions is Edwardian era history and as I keep reading more books about it, some people pop up over and over again until finally I either buy a biography or their letters and diaries to figure out what they were up to. Harold Nicolson is one of those people who show up in every book you will read about the 1900s through to the 1960s, as he was involved in huge amounts of historical events and had a very busy social […]

“You cannot live at all if you do not learn to adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be”

Eleanor by David Michaelis

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The book: Eleanor by David Michaelis is a single-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. Why I read it: I’ve always thought Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the more interesting First Ladies. While I still think that as an adult, as a child a big part of that was from seeing “Annie” so many times. Having grandparents that lived through the Great Depression was part of it, too. When this book was released it seemed to get a certain amount of fanfare–enough, anyway, for me to notice and add […]

Romance Focused on Overcoming Fear

The Wedding Con by Janine Amesta

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Last week I sped-read through Love at First Flight, sinking into the Central Oregon setting and the lives of the Moreno family that Janine Amesta created. It spurred me to pick up the ARC I had of The Wedding Con and get to reading it immediately.  Where Love at First Flight focuses on the grief journeys of its leads, The Wedding Con focuses on fear. Naomi Moreno is the middle sister and had witnessed her father be suckered into get rich quick investment schemes via YouTube […]



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