Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?”

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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I worked three jobs in the summer of 2005. I frequently worked more than one during any given day. Days off did not exist- except, miraculously, for the 4th of July. The history of the 4th holds no meaning here, just that I finally had a day to myself. I spent my one day off in bed, reading The Handmaid’s Tale from cover to cover. I did not leave the room. I turned down, much to the chagrin of the person whose bed it was, all opportunities […]

A book and a protagonist who are many things at once

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

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Margaret Atwood is nothing if not a hardworking novelist, and often something of a genre chameleon: she has made her work in science fiction with the MadAddam trilogy, dystopian fiction with The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, literary retellings with The Penelopiad and Hag-Seed, and historical fiction with works like The Blind Assassin. Alias Grace, her 1996 Booker-finalist novel, is another of her forays into historical fiction, and it showcases Atwood at the top of her game, with a subtle, elusive narrative that employs narrative uncertainty and distinctive character voices, as well as […]

The culmination of nine books of story.

How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #9) by Louise Penny

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This is the closest I have ever been to giving one of these books five stars. I think I might have even done it if I’d been able to read the book faster, but since I was stuck with audio CD’s from my library, which I could only listen to in my car, my time with the story stretched out and I was able to think about it more rationally than I would have if were sitting on my couch frantically turning pages to find […]

What a strange, lovely little book.

That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston

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I’m a little torn on this one, honestly! I thought it was a bit slow for my tastes, mostly at the beginning, and I would have appreciated a bit more wallowing in emotions, but I also understand this is a book designed in part to ape Victorian conventions and mores, so perhaps I was never going to get the version of this book that would have pleased me best. And what a strange little book it was! This is an alternate history/speculative take on quite […]

Childhood favorite revisited, more than holds up.

Anne of Green Gables ( Anne of Green Gables, #1) by L.M. Montgomery

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I must have read this book dozens of times when I was a kid (I think I had an illustrated version as well, but I can’t find it, nor any record of it online, so far all I know I may have made it up?), but I haven’t read it, oh I don’t know, at least since middle school? I also never read any of L.M. Montgomery’s other books. No idea why I did this. Even as a kid, I was all over sequels, a little […]



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