Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sublime horror classic

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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This pandemic is giving me a chance to read some classics that I’ve never read before- silver lining!  Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley in 1816, when she was all of 18 years old (Lainey Gossip would call her a First Book Bitch although this was actually her second book…).  Frankenstein was Shelley’s entry into a horror story challenge between herself, her lover and soon to be husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend, Lord Byron. Despite what Hollywood might have you believe, Frankenstein is […]

Short reads to finish off my reading year (and help me to finally complete my double Cannonball)

Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen

The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedgwick

A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

A Second-Chance Road Trip for Christmas by Jackie Lau

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Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen Rating: 4 stars In this novella which concludes Kelly Bowen’s The Devils of Dover series, we finally find out more about the mysterious King, who has been popping up in Bowen’s books for a long time. A shadowy London crime lord with connections to smuggling, art forgery, theft and all sorts of other untoward business, he is not a man to cross. He discovers that a man he believed to be dead, a man who ruined his childhood and set him […]

It’s official: I ain’t got no cooth

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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I’ve resolved to read more classics this year, and that puts me in a bit of a bind. There simply aren’t as many capital-C Classics by women (which does *not* reflect well on our culture), and I’m not that excited to overload on male writers just yet. I know this really means that I need to dig a little deeper and search a little harder to find the good stuff, but in the meantime, I have a few on my shelves, including one that I […]

An epic tale about the hopelessness of being The Other

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[BINGO!] I’ve been mulling over this review of Frankenstein for a couple of weeks now and I have so many thoughts and feelings! I’ll first admit that I had never read Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus before this year, and truly believed that the gothic horror story was just the same as James Whale’s Frankenstein movie. And it is not. At all. The same. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote her epic tale about the hopelessness of being The Other, of the misery of the life unwanted, and uncared for. The monster is a […]

Splash down with Ninteenth Century Evil Science

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The basic storyline is thus: a group of daughters/creations of infamous literary scientists band together for self-protection and sisterhood, have adventures, and solve crimes. We have Mary Jekyll, the leader, Diana Hyde the wild and bratty little sister, Beatrice Rappaccini the beauty, Catherine Moreau the fierce one, and Justine Frankenstein the strong one. They are assisted by Mrs. Poole the housekeeper, Alice the maid, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as themselves. Their main target of investigation is Société des Alchemistes, a shadowy organization to […]

Truth Time: Victor Frankenstein is a Dick

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Hollywood can’t get Frankenstein right.  We all grew up thinking that the Frankenstein monster was this green, groaning thing was stupid and aimlessly looking for people to murder.  The reason why Hollywood can’t get it right is because while people do die in the book, it’s not a traditional horror novel.  Instead, it’s a quiet study of what makes us human and what happens when our basic needs aren’t met.  It’s a gentle argument that we are shaped into the people we are rather than born […]



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