Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“The ultimate effect of unceasing propaganda has now been to cancel out the effect of all news alike.”

A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940 by Iris Origo

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Another random bookstore find, as so many good books in my life are. It’s why I trawl through my favorite sections! A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940 is what the title conveys. Iris Origo was an American born woman married to an Italian man (although she spent most of her life in Italy from childhood) and this is her diary of 1939-1940 as Italy slowly descends into war. Origo was a woman from a highly privileged background — her godfather was the […]

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!

Rapture and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Daniel Mark Epstein (Editor)

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Starting in 1907 as a teenager, Edna St Vincent Millay began documenting her life in a series of diaries, ending in 1949. These diaries chart her early hopes and dreams, her rise to fame as one of the most prominent American contemporary poets, her farm life with her husband Eugen, and her struggles with alcohol and morphine addiction. I am not a reader of poetry – it simply doesn’t appeal to me terribly. Consequently my knowledge of all but the most well-known poets is a […]

A Self-Care Treat for Me

The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay & Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's novel to film by Emma Thompson

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The 1995 movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is maybe my favorite movie adaptation ever and is certainly in my top five movies of all time. I will watch it when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m wistful, when I’m tired. It makes my heart happy and is one of my go to tools in the self-care toolbox. While I have read many Austen related books in my time with Cannonball I had never poked around into books about the movie adaptations. Then in […]

Where it started, how it’s going/Cannonball

Markings by Dag Hammarskjold

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My first review of CBR12 was Of Mice and Men, and I noted in the review that it was one of the most depressing books I have ever read. It feels like that book set the tone for 2020. By mid-March, reading for fun was … difficult. All the worries and fears surrounding COVID encroached on everything I read. Now that we have made it to the end of the year and there is a light at the end of the tunnel — a change […]

Very unlike my own adolescence

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

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#CBR12 Bingo: Nostalgia (set in the 1990s, when I was a teenager) Official book description: Angus: My mixed-breed cat, half domestic tabby, half Scottish wildcat. The size of a small Labrador, only mad.   Thongs: Stupid underwear. What’s the point of them, anyway? They just go up your bum, as far as I can tell.   Full-Frontal Snogging: Kissing with all the trimmings, lip to lip, open mouth, tongues … everything.   Her dad’s got the mentality of a Teletubby (only not so developed). Her cat, […]

A piece of pop culture history

The Making of Prince of Persia Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner

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A few facts The first video game I ever played was Prince of Persia, I was six years old. My school had a bunch of IBM computers which you could use (after finishing homework) and the only game that actually worked on them was Prince of Persia. Unsurprisingly I never got to actually play it very often (or at all) because somehow the boys always got access to the computers before anyone else could. I did manage to play it one time, and never managed […]



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