Cannonball Read 16

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Grief, murder and more grief

The Maidens: A Novel by Alex Michaelides

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I tore through this novel over the weekend. It’s a psychological thriller and murder mystery set at Cambridge University. “The Maidens” are an informal sorority of students whose leader/father figure is an American professor of classics named Edward Fosca. When a beautiful “maiden” named Tara is found brutally murdered just off campus, psychotherapist Mariana Andros rushes to the university to comfort her niece Zoe, Tara’s best friend. Mariana is convinced that despite his alibi, Fosca is behind the murder, especially when the body of another […]

Dated and hard to stomach (DNF)

Rivals by Jilly Cooper

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This novel from the 1980s was recently turned into a series on Disney+ of all places. I watched it because it has a bunch of actors I really like in it, including David Tennant and Aiden Turner (who is sporting a ridiculous Super Mario mustache). If you miss the 1980s and enjoy adult, “Dallas” style TV, you should check it out. The first scene is two people having sex in the lavatory on the Concorde and a few scenes later we get full frontal male […]

A haunting and memorable journey

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

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Lincoln in the Bardo is a story that you chew on. You can’t just sip it and multitask and hope to passively absorb it. You have to pay attention and actively read (or listen, in my case). But it’s so rewarding when you finish it, and worth the extra mental effort. If you’re like me and thinking a Bardo is something like a bar, you are completely wrong my friend. In buddhism, a bardo is a liminal space between death and rebirth. So we are […]

Another okay book in a series I keep going back to

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire

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This is book nine in the Wayward Children Series, a series of books about children who have found portals into alternate worlds that can be the stuff of nightmares or dreams, depending on the child. A good thing about this series is that you could probably read the books out of order, since they deal with different children and worlds. But there are recurring characters and themes throughout, which might be lost by going out of order. This book is about Antsy, who has a […]

This kid’s worse than a villain

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume

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I’m a little embarrased to admit that I’d never read a Judy Blume book. I know Superfudge and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret were big hits when I was growing up. But I never picked them up, despite the fact I read a lot at that age. And now, I have a son in 4th grade. And he was reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. So I decided to read it too. And here’s my takeaway: Fudge is a terrible human being. […]

“You won’t necessarily win against fate, but you should at least put up a fight.”

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

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On a flight from Hobart to Sydney, a strange woman goes up the aisle delivers unnerving predictions to the passengers about when and how they will die. At first the passengers dismiss it as some kind of stunt, try to put it out of their minds – until the first deaths begin. When I reveal that I enjoy reading tarot cards, people inevitably ask if I actually think I can predict the future with them. Actually I am not really sure if one can, but […]



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