Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When in doubt, tea.

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

by Leave a Comment

cbr16bingo golden Mrs. Palfrey, recently widowed, has had to make a decision regarding the rest of her life.  She has no home of her own, since she had spent most of her life stationed in Burma with her husband.  She had been temporarily staying with her daughter in Scotland, but clearly that was no permanent solution.  So she eyed the London papers and settled on the Claremont Hotel in South Kensington.  After all, her grandson, whom she had rarely seen, worked nearby at the British […]

“They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.”

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

by Leave a Comment

Somehow, despite being an English major in college and a big reader my whole life, this is a classic I had never heard of or come across. I discovered it in a very weird way, which I’ll detail after my brief review. (Isn’t reviewing classics weird? What else can you add to the narrative?) This finalist for the Pulitzer is a vibrant, gripping meditation on war, specifically, the Vietnam War, and I’m glad it’s been a focus in the American education system over the years, […]

“When you’re growing up, you don’t ask whether your family’s good, do you? Especially if you don’t know anything else. They’re just your family.”

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

by Leave a Comment

Stepmoms in pop culture get a bad rap. Actually bad rap isn’t right. We are maligned and reduced to a trope, typically gold diggers, people who don’t like kids, and someone who isn’t at all interested in the work of parenting (i.e., the original OG stepmoms like Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White or modern like Parent Trap, or the newer Parent Trap, repeat infinity with basically every stepmom forever). In a recent episode of my podcast (linked here, self-promotion is never done) I […]

I Loathed This Book. Hostile Review Follows

The Au Pair Affair by Tessa Bailey

by 5 Comments

Is this grumpy/sunshine romance or old coot/youth? Do vegans wear leather skirts? How much does an average hockey player weigh? Why does she keep cooking them dinner? How is this a rational custody arrangement? Keep reading to find out. From Amazon: Tallulah is smart, vivacious, and studying to be a marine biologist. She’s also twenty-six and broke. So when Burgess, a battle-scarred hockey veteran and newly single dad, offers her a job as his live-in nanny, she jumps at the opportunity to get paid while […]

“Friendship is a contract between two hearts. With hearts united, women can laugh and cry, live and die together.”

Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See

by Leave a Comment

My local library has us go around in a circle and sum up the book in one word (Or a few words, I mean, they aren’t strict about it and sometimes one word just won’t do!) and my word for this one was “unrelenting” because I found it to be one of the toughest reads I’ve gone through in a while. That’s not to say it isn’t a good book, it is but, it’s about being a woman in China in the 1400s so there […]

“The problem with family is that they know where all the levers are that make you move. They’re usually the ones who installed the levers in the first place.”

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

by Leave a Comment

I picked this book up for a  read along with a few friends and it’s a great one for the season: one part silly, one part spooky, one part WAIT WHAT?! The general consensus from the group was that we liked it, but maybe didn’t love it and that it was a bit of a slow build, some felt it was too slow, I was along for the ride. Someone who had read other Kingfisher novels was surprised at how differernt it was in tone, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo