Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

There are Never Enough Modern Retellings of Pride and Prejudice

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

by Leave a Comment

Timeless satire for the win. The many adaptations of Jane’s Pride and Prejudice only strengthen my admiration of the sly intelligence in the original. Apparently this is the 4th book of the Austen Project, what a delightful discovery. Liz Bennet is pulled back into her hometown Chicago and dysfunctional family dynamics when her father has a health scare. You will recognize the rest of the Bennet characters immediately. Author Curtis Sittenfeld is just loyal enough to the original’s wit, characters and storyline for comfort. This […]

Hot eventually gets boring, but funny never does.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

by Leave a Comment

People are way freakier than we acknowledge. Attraction has to do with so many things besides appearance. Hot eventually gets boring but funny never does. ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy Another of my pet peeves is that the female characters used to be all sort of cutesy, like having flour on their nose after they baked cookies and not knowing it. And now they’re all a mess, like waking up really hungover and getting fired. I want to create characters who aren’t flawless but also […]

“Sometimes when I speak, I feel like I’m writing dialogue for the character of myself. I’m impersonating a normal human when really I’m a confused freak.”

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

by Leave a Comment

In five words: Romance, Comedy, SNL, Pandemic, Self Doubt I mean, it’s right there in the title: Romantic Comedy is up front about what it proports to be, and Sittenfeld delivers exactly what it says on the cover. I saw this one on the shelf at my library and snatched it up as I was in the market for something light and fun for summer. It’s been a while since I read any of her novels (having enjoyed both Prep and American Wife) and this one […]

“And isn’t it just so pretty to think / All along there was some invisible string / Tying you to me?”

Really Good, Actually (2023) by Monica Heisey

Romantic Comedy (2023) by Curtis Sittenfeld

by Leave a Comment

Really Good, Actually (2023) by Monica Heisey I came across Monica Heisey on Caroline O’Donoghue’s podcast Sentimental Garbage, in an episode on ‘Break-Ups’, and then found out that Heisey had been a writer on Schitt’s Creek, which I love enough that I wrote an academic chapter on it and still managed to love it afterwards. Really Good, Actually, does not at all have a Schitt’s Creek vibe, which is good! We love a versatile creative type! It’s about Maggie and her post-divorce malaise at the […]

Saturday Night Live, But With Romance!

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

by Leave a Comment

Sally Milz is a writer on the clearly-SNL-inspired show The Night Owlz, whose past heartbreaks have led to her to a series of f*ckbuddies and her emotional commitments reserved for her friends and her stepdad. For an upcoming show, she writes a sketch mocking the trend of average men dating women way out of their league, but the guest host – musician Noah Brewster – refuses to play the part she’s envisioned for him. The sketch gets greenlit anyway, with Noah in a different role, […]

“If you’re our age and single, dating kind of has to be an act of reckless optimism”

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

by Leave a Comment

This book explores the journey of learning that long engrained habits are no longer serving us, and that despite this knowledge it still requires immense fortitude to let them go. And then you have to go and do it again and again until you die. Plot: Sally is a writer for the copy-right safe SNL called the Night Owls, and she’s kind of bitter. She had let a lot of her youth be dictated by what she was supposed to want, and when she finally […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo