Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

E. M. Forster, you absolute gem of a man!

Howards End by E. M. Forster

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CBR18 BINGO: Summer, because the tryst between Helen and Paul that starts the plot rolling happens in the summer Double BINGO – Across: Success, Justice, You, Wealth, Summer Down: One, Wheels, Summer, And, Repair After finishing E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, I had an urge to revisit Howards End, a novel I hadn’t read in close to 40 years.  It was a close race, but I do believe I enjoyed Howards End even more. (Note, this review contains some minor spoilers.) The story […]

“I pictured a section in the ladies’ auxiliary church cookbook for Sudden Death Quick Snacks…using ingredients one could keep on the pantry shelf in the event of tragedy.”

“F” is for Fugitive: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery (#6) by Sue Grafton

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Floral Beach, California could barely be called a town: six streets long and three deep, its only notable feature a strip of sand fronting the Pacific. And seventeen years ago Jean Timberlake, promiscuous high schooler, was found strangled on that strip of sand. The people of Floral Beach hadn’t thought of Jean since shortly after her body had been found: Bailey Fowler, the self-confessed killer, had been properly processed and convicted. It didn’t even matter that a year after the conviction,  Fowler walked away from […]

Sometimes I wish my first word was “quote”, so that on my death bed, my last words could be “end quote”.- Steven Wright

I See You’ve Called in Dead: A Novel by John Kenney

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Obituary writer Bud Stanley has fallen into a funk, existing (not living) in his own life. Divorced (his wife left him for a coworker, an admittedly more interesting man), half-hearted in his job, Bud’s final straw comes when the blind date a coworker set him up with shows up at the bar just to tell him she’s had a better offer. So, in a case of drunken “wouldn’t it be funny”-ness, he publishes his own obituary in the newspaper he works for. (Who knew that […]

Timeless or timely? I have so many thoughts about racism, sexism, and white privilege

A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

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CBR18 BINGO: Justice, because an accused Indian man faces British justice Pursuant to this review title, I was impressed and a little surprised that E. M. Forster had so much to say about race and gender, having been born in England in the late Victorian era. Considered by some to be his masterpiece, A Passage to India is a captivating and complicated study of British-India relations during the British Raj. It also touches on attitudes toward gender, though some readers have criticized that Forster falls […]

“Welcome home, eh?” He shakes his head like he didn’t have to travel the world to know where to find a woman like her.

Un Verano Contigo by Cynthia A. Rodriguez

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Cynthia A. Rodriguez is a new to me author. I picked up her most recent release, Un Verano Contigo, in part because it’s a short 70 pages and seemed like a good way to try out her style. I am in love. It is so good. I love short stories and, yes, I do think they are harder to write than a novel. Rodriguez has done magic, she’s crafted a story that feels bigger than the page count. Un Verano Contigo is set during a […]

I Wish I Could Explain Why I Liked This

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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CBR18 BINGO: using the Free Space to replace Joker I hated this when I read it in high school. That was so long ago that I don’t recall why, but my guess is that 16-year-old Tracy had Strong Feelings™ about how books were supposed to end and objected to how this one ended. I’m not sure what made me try it again, but I’m glad I did. I really liked it! Um. I’m just not sure why. This is actually a challenging book to rate […]



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