Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“I live with bread like you, feel want / Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, / How can you say to me, I am a king?”

The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman

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I picked this up based off reading the introduction for the sequel and seeing how much Larman dislikes Edward VIII (whom I will be referring to as David — Larman makes the choice to use Edward in his book, which is fair enough, but his whole family called him David and I prefer to link the name Edward to my much preferred favorite, Edward VII). I figured I should start with the first volume and see what led him to such vituperative language in the […]

Life imitates art, which is inspired by quiet village life

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson

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15-word review: Anonymous spinster Barbara Buncle writes a book to pay the bills, her entire village rages. This witty novel, originally published in 1934, features rather plain and unassuming village spinster Barbara Buncle falling on hard times and writing a novel to make enough money to be able to pay her bills. She briefly considered keeping chickens but doesn’t like birds. As Miss Buncle hasn’t really been anywhere or experienced much outside village life, she uses her own neighbours and the village of Copperfield where […]

“Kim was starlight and privilege; Will had his feet firmly fixed in the mud. They didn’t belong together. Except they did.”

Subtle Blood by K.J. Charles

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CBR14 Bingo: Scandal (the book features corruption, blackmail, kidnapping, and murder – not to mention gay people in the 1920s. Gasp!) Spoiler warning! This is the third book in a trilogy. While you can absolutely read this book without the others, you will not get all the beautiful payoff from various earlier storylines that way. Also, this review will contain mild spoilers for earlier in the series. Start with Slippery Creatures. For the last few months, Lord Arthur “Kim” Secretan and Will Darling have actually […]

Anti-Semites Get Theirs

Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America by Michael Benson

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CBR 14 Bingo: Bodies Bodies hit the floor a whole lot of times, if not permanently. With Nazism on the rise in 1930s America, protected by free speech laws, a Jewish judge sets out to deal with them in the only way he knows how – by setting gangsters on them. I’m not big on WW2 stories, mostly because I feel like the market is rather oversaturated. But rather perversely I’m still always on the lookout for unique stories in this setting, because those stories […]

Island Time

The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama

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I’ve been to Hawaii twice in my life: once in my early 20s, and the other time a family vacation about 5 years ago.  And both times I was fortunately to be able to spend some time in Hilo, on the big island.  It is absolutely my favorite place on the islands – old school, totally laid back, and very few tourists.  I don’t think it changed a whit during the forty-odd years in between my two trips.  And that is probably why I enjoyed […]

Lyrical, Soulful, Compelling

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugan

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I’ve been wanting to read Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugan’s Giller prize-winning, Booker prize-shortlisted novel, ever since it came out in 2011- its only taken a “Music” bingo square to finally get me there.  Half-Blood Blues is a beautifully written, deeply layered, and historically fascinating novel about a group of mixed-race jazz musicians in Paris and Berlin during the wild interwar years.  The novel opens in Paris in 1941, when one of the band members gets ‘pinched’ by the occupying Nazis. From this navel, the […]



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