Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Maybe Scrooge shouldn’t have offered that Smoking Bishop. Bob Cratchitt might have been better off.

Cratchitt: "A Christmas Carol" Continues by R.M. Bouknight

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Thirteen years ago, the Spirits of Christmas visited Ebeneezer Scrooge to turn his life around. Now, it’s Bob Cratchitt’s turn. This was certainly an interesting continuation of A Christmas Carol; I don’t think anyone at the end of the first book would expect Bob Cratchitt of forgetting Christmas, but here he certainly has. No one in the Cratchitts are really happy, in fact, and it all comes back to Bob and his social climbing which this author compares to Scrooge, a man who became so […]

“He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father.”

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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For my last review of the year, I’m coming in hot with a classic. I’m a huuuuuge fan of a Dickens adaptation. The simple story of a jerk who is shown the error of his ways (by ghosts) and decides to live life anew, with a song in his heart and a renewed application of kindness to mankind, resonates with me. Christmas simply isn’t Christmas without watching the Muppet version of “A Christmas Carol.” Also, my husband introduced me to “Scrooged,” when we first started […]

Marley was dead.

A Christmas Carol by Jim Dale

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If you’re like me and you’ve listened to a lot of audiobooks, you might transpose your sense and understanding of one narrator associated with a particular author onto other authors when that narrator shows up later. So maybe John Lee’s presence on an audio addition of Lord Jim makes it feel like Jo Nesbo has just written that novel. Or maybe Simon Vance reading a contemporary British novel makes you feel like it’s written by Patrick O’Brien, Anne Rice, or Naomi Novik. And of course Frank […]

A classic gets a pleasant but unnecessary sequel.

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The Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, is one of my favorite books. I love the language, the sly wit, and the simple but timeless story of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge. I will confess I’ve never given much thought to what came next but this book is here to answer that question. For those familiar with A Christmas Carol you will immediately notice the descriptions and setup in the sequel is the same as the first book. The book is divided into the same […]

God Bless Us Every Quarter Cannonball!

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Everyone knows the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as the story of a mean old miser named Scrooge who has a change of heart after being visited by four ghosts. I have seen many film versions of this story, but I can’t really choose a favourite amongst them as they include things that I like and things that I don’t. The main difference between the movies and the book is that the book has many things that the movies […]

This is not the Dickens I was Looking for

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I haven’t read any Dickens. Ever. What at first was an oversight had turned over the years into a point of silly pride. Sometimes you just don’t want to read a classic author, you know? I’m sure part of it was that for many years one of the holiday events I worked was based on A Christmas Carol. The story is ubiquitous. Almost everyone knows the story of Scrooge being visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, getting himself scared straight and […]



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