Cannonball Read 11

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Not Enough Egypt for Me in This Preposterous Thriller

The Pharaoh Key by Preston & Child

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Whenever I feel the need for some literary comfort food my first instinct is to grab a mystery or crime thriller. I think it’s the combination of thrills with puzzle-solving that appeals to me. The title of this paperback. The Pharaoh Key, jumped out at me because it not only promised a mystery, but it combined another one of my interests, ancient Egypt. I have read some other books by this author team, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, featuring their investigator Agent Prendergast, so I thought I’d give this a try. It is apparently part of a series featuring Indiana […]

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9/22/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:2 |

Pauline Gedge it is not

Valley of the Kings by Cecelia Holland

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This is basically two novellas. The first, about Carter finding Tut’s tomb, is pretty good. It also includes the conflict between Egyptians and those who would steal their heritage.  Holland seems to do a good characterization of Carter and his determination and single-mindless.  There is an interesting debate between Carter and Lady Evelyn that touches on the point of history and how those in the present view those of the past. Carter himself is drawn as a flawed man – not only in his relationship with Lady Evelyn but with his Egyptian head worker.  To say that that the true […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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3/7/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:28 |

Nine lost civilizations and one completely mythical city

Lost Civilizations: 10 Societies That Vanished Without a Trace by Michael Rank

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At barely a hundred pages, Lost Civilizations isn’t a hefty tome, by any definition. It’s the kind of book you find in the discount bin at Barnes & Noble. It’s the kind of book my uncle would get me when I was twelve, because he knew I liked history but had no idea which books I had, or which subjects, specifically, I was interested in. Which is fine. There’s a place for those books. But I’m usually looking for more than that. These books were not a deep dive into any of the civilizations discussed, which is disappointing because there […]

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10/21/2018 's CBR10 Review No:43 |

A historical romance with hieroglyphs, adventure and a mongoose named Marigold

Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase

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Rupert Carsington is the fourth son of the Earl of Hargate and has been sent to Egypt to get out of the way of all the calamities he’s been able to get tangled in at home in England and on the continent. He finds himself locked up in a dungeon jail after seeing a bunch of soldiers beat up a beggar in the street and deciding to defend the man, beating up a horde of soldiers as a result. His bail is paid by Mrs Daphne Pembroke, a widow searching for her missing brother. Daphne Pembroke may still be wearing […]

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3/5/2017 's CBR9 Review No:19 |

God Save the King

The Woman Who Would Be King by Kara Cooney

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I think all of us went through an Egypt phase in school. It was right after our paleontologist phase and right before we became too cool for phases. We devoured any National Geographic with the pyramids on the cover, became a little too knowledgeable about the macabre process of mummification, and spouted off as many facts about the “cool” pharaohs that our patient parents would listen to. There was the trifecta of the most badass pharaohs to ever pharaoh-Nefertiti, King Tut and Cleopatra. Well, with due respect to the Big Three, Hatshepsut might leave them in the dust. Kara Cooney’s […]

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1/6/2017 's CBR9 Review No:1 |

One of these things is not like the other

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

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Well, this is awkward. I bought this book after a couple rave reviews here on CBR.  As with many of my CBR reads, it’s a bit outside my usual repetoire.  This is my first CBR DNF.  I’m not even sure if that’s CBR legal.  Can I review if I didn’t finish?  I’m going with the “ask for forgiveness, not permission” route. For a while I was attending an ARC book club at the local bookstore.  Each member registers and gets to borrow an Advanced Reader Copy from the store, read it, and come to the meeting to review it in […]

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4/27/2016 's CBR8 Review No:13 |

A Gender-Bending Reign In Ancient Egypt

The Woman Who Would Be King by Kara Cooney

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When I was a little girl, my mom bought me a book about King Tutankhamen. It had beautiful glossy photos, and I was fascinated by the short life of the boy king…and the maybe-supernaturally shortened lives of the people who excavated his tomb and awakened the mummy’s curse. From there sparked a love of ancient Egypt, peaking when I was absolutely nerdy enough at age 9 or so to write a letter to the editor to correct one of the Detroit papers when they ran an article that misidentified Osiris as a goddess. While my hardcore Egypt phase eventually faded, […]

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3/31/2016 's CBR8 Review No:6 |

If Suppiluliuma were here, I wonder what he’d make of the Arab Spring.

1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline

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In many ways, “the world” of 3200 years ago was vastly different from today. The Torah (or “Hebrew Bible”, if you’re so inclined) wouldn’t be written for another 600 years. If Homer existed, he wouldn’t be born for another 300 years (give or take). Elsewhere in the world, the ancient Puebloans of the American Southwest first formed. The 12th century BCE is as far removed from the formation of the Roman Empire as we are from the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. In short, this was a long time ago. But, in other ways, it is remarkably similar. The […]

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10/2/2015 's CBR7 Review No:19 |


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