Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Saint Joan

Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw

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Saint Joan – 4/5 I don’t know what I actually know about Joan of Arc, and almost all my references points are either the not very good Luc Besson movie “The Messenger” with Mila Jovavich which was interesting in a lot of ways but a failure in many others, from a Simpsons episode, and of course, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I get the impression that there was a kind of cult of Joan throughout the 19th century (where both George Bernard Shaw and Mark […]

King Lear

King Lear by William Shakespeare

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  King Lear – King Lear is often considered Shakespeare’s best play and I guess it just depends on who you ask. Not being old yet myself, I still think it’s Hamlet, but maybe as I get older I will better understand. I definitely think it’s the most relatable play outside of the confines of the theater because there’s two pressing dynamics at play here: parents to children, but also children to parents. And while these might seem the same dynamic, I mean specifically the […]

The Tempest

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

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The Tempest – One of the last if not the last of the written plays, this one has always been among my favorites. It’s such a slight play in terms of plot, with really only a handful of scenes, a pretty straightforward plot in a lot of ways, and a small cast of characters. It’s also one of the plays (and there’s plenty of others) where the concept of plays and performance come up in the text itself. The plot, if you don’t know it: […]

J.B. Priestley

An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley

Dangerous Corner by J. B. Priestley

I've Been Here Before by J. B. Priestley

Time and the Conways by J. B. Priestley

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An Inspector Calls – 5/5 This is nice little disturbing play about class consciousness. A well-off family is about to sit down to dinner one evening when a knock on their door reveals a a police inspector asking to interview the family. When they ask him what it’s about he’s a little coy, for reasons that become clear later, and he explains that a girl (young woman) has been found dead of suicide and he wants to investigate her death. The father of the family, […]

life on the edge, in more ways than one

The Colony by Audrey Magee

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CBR Bingo Square: New Another entry in my summer of Irish fiction, but also one of the two Irish novels that made it onto this year’s Booker Prize longlist! (It’s a fun longlist this year, too, with both the oldest and youngest nominees, and the shortest book ever nominated.) I’m still waiting on Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These from the library, but I was able to check out Aubrey Magee’s The Colony almost immediately. And, oof, what a good novel. The novel is set on a […]

the great 2022 Bingo Catch-Up!

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark

From Hollywood, With Love by Scott Meslow

The Companion by E.E. Ottoman

My Mother, She Killed Me, My Father, He Ate Me by Kate Bernheimer

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It wouldn’t be CBR Bingo without me frantically catching up on everything I read but was too distracted to write about, now would it? Square: Cold – Fool Moon – DNF This is it, folks- my first DNF in YEARS! I just couldn’t do it. I started this book way back in JANUARY, and despite multiple formats and multiple tries, I just can’t do it. I know there’s a mythical “it gets better” carrot hanging out past the fourth entry, but I just don’t have […]



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