Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A graphic novel to introduce classic novels

The Night Librarian by Christopher Lincoln

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The New York Public Library has a secret. After hours, a group of librarians called The Night Librarians make sure book characters stay put in their books. You see, the older a book is, the more bored its characters are of reliving the same old story day after day. So the Night Librarians make sure Peter Pan flies back to Neverland and Scrooge stays put in Olde England, and most alarmingly, that Captain Hook, the ghosts, and other dangerous villains don’t wreak havoc on library […]

H.G. Wells is the villain for boring me to death

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

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Sometimes the idea of a story is a thousand times better than the actual story, as is the case with H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man. I look at that cover and think, “This is going to be one badass book–a fun, light read that will nevertheless leave me pondering the nature of loneliness and isolation.” (Okay, I didn’t get all of that from the cover.) With fewer than 200 pages, this book turned out to be an unexpected slog and I’m still not sure what […]

“Money, money, money!” Or, greedy Victorian bastards

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

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I’ve had the idea in the back of my mind for a long time that I’d like to read every full-length Dickens novel, but I only just recently decided to get serious about it. For some reason, I decided that also should include re-reading ones that I don’t remember well. I vaguely remember enjoying Our Mutual Friend when I read it about 15 years ago, but I couldn’t remember the details. First takeaway: Even by Dickens’ standards, this novel feels a trifle padded. I generally […]

“And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn’t have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.”

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

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An author tries to tell the story of a poor young woman called Macabeá, who despite her wretched circumstances does not seem to understand how unhappy she should be. I picked this book because I read a review by someone else on Goodreads that said this is a bit like if Sybil Trelawney from Harry Potter wrote a book, though I will argue after reading that Lispector, unlike Trelawney, knows exactly what she’s about. (The other thing I know about Lispector is that she wrote […]

Navel Gazers United

Justine by Lawrence Durrell

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Justine follows the various intermingled lives and love affairs of a group of artistic people in Alexandria, where it sometimes seems the city is playing itself out in their daily struggles. This is a bit of a difficult book to write a review of, because frankly not much happens. The narrator is in a relationship with one woman but becomes bound in a passionate affair with another, complicated by the fact that he is friends with her husband, and the fact that this woman Justine […]

“To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the nosier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex.”

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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The lovely second Lady Audley is most fortunate, having been elevated in the world from governess to peeress by her marriage to the rich and doting Sir Audley. But, as Sir Audley’s nephew Robert will soon learn, she has a dangerous secret which she will go to any lengths to conceal. Lady Audley’s Secret belongs to the genre of  Victorian ‘sensation novels’ be, which ar a precursor to the more openly violent pulp novels which were popular in the 20th century. Previously I’ve read a […]



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