Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

[got me] to a nunnery!

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Heloise & Abelard: A New Biography by James Burge

The Tigress of Forlì: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de Medici by Elizabeth Lev

Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love by Myriam Cyr

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I thought I was going to need some time to recover from the exquisite The Everlasting, but really it flung me head-first into a literal rabbit-hole. A warren. An abbey. A nunnery, if you will. Also- The Atlantic just posted a list of books that were done dirty by pandemic releases, and OF COURE The Everlasting resides within those vaulted halls. I was immediately drawn to Caterina Riario Sforza de Medici after she was mentioned several times in The Everlasting. A distant relative of her spots her likeness in the […]

Love me some historical messy bishes

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

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Are you one of those people who likes to read the book before seeing the movie?  I am.  So when I found out (around 3-4 years late) that there was a White Queen mini-series, I was excited to jump in.  I had also just lost my job and I was really looking for a book to serve as a screen saver for the brain; something that would entertain me but wouldn’t test me.  A historical family drama definitely hit the spot. Philippa Gregory’s collected works […]

You could do worse than this fictionalized primer on the War of the Roses

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3.5 stars Philippa Gregory is a giant in her corner of historical fiction, which seems essentially “Aristocrats and Nobles of 15th and 16th century Britain (particularly Women).” Even though I had never read her books, I had a detached respect for her as a well-researched author whose fictionalizations garnered generalized interest for the history her books cover. That impression holds true, and I still appreciate her doing her thing. I get that because she’s working from a record of stuff that actually happened, she can […]

Peony in Love

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Peony in Love was, well, more the story of how a girlish obsession could turn into a one-note bit of character development.  Sadly, Peony is a boring young lady, rich and well-bred, and betrothed to a rather mushy-headed young man.  They meet once, never once trading identities (it’s once a night for three nights, actually, but they do so little they could have done it all in one night) and based on that, Peony is In Love.  Her mild obsession with the Chinese opera “The […]



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