Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Switching it up to Faerie Tale Gothic

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

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  Just last week, I reviewed one of the books in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series, which is steeped in faerie folklore and mythology. There’s nothing like a good fairytale retelling – folklore characters are in the public domain and are fair game for any author who wants to write their own interpretation of them. It can be fascinating to see what direction different people decide to take. For example, the Cait Sith (or Cait Sidhe) of the October Daye universe are wildly different to Jim Butcher’s portrayal of them in his Harry Dresen series. The former involves a race […]

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10/13/2018 's CBR10 Review No:26 |

I don’t think it’s aged all that well (Plus, half Cannonball!)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

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I’ve heard James’ The Turn of the Screw as being a classic Gothic novel, the one that basically begat a genre and inspired authors like Shirley Jackson (whose books I’ve loved so far in my readings). I chose this one for the ‘This Old Thing’ bingo square (it was published in 1898), and I was really excited to finally sit down and read it Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The plot is about a young governess who takes a posting that’s too good to be true in an old country manor house, for a charming (and neglectful) man who is the ward of […]

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9/29/2018 's CBR10 Review No:26 |

Full of sound and fury…

The Quick by Lauren Owen

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My heart was beating so fast at the end of the first section of The Quick, and Lauren Owen’s ability to write a ripping cliffhanger at section ends was phenomenal. She also has a gift for developing characters that feel real and compelling; to be fair, not all characters – I thought James Norbury, around whom much of the action revolves, was kind of a drip, for example. However, when I thought back over what I read, there was little there there. To take a step back, The Quick is set in Victorian England and opens, like a good gothic […]

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12/21/2017 's CBR9 Review No:9 |

Well, I think I’ll go and oil my gun.

The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard

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Opening salvo, hot take: everything Tom Stoppard has ever written is incredible; this isn’t his best work. The Real Inspector Hound is the first live production of a Stoppard play I ever saw, followed about a year and a half later by Arcadia. So, I will always be grateful to Hound for preparing me, because otherwise Arcadia might have melted my brain, and working directly with Tom (humblebrag) on The Coast of Utopia would have been the actual death of me. Hound is a delight. It takes on the absurdity of the business of criticism and the entitlement of understudies […]

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12/13/2017 's CBR9 Review No:47 |

A healthy dose of indifference and melancholy

We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Historian by Shirley Jackson and Elizabeth Kostova

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So these two books round out my catching up on lost reviews. I feel like I’ve read a hundred books that I’ve had to force myself to review, because I either didn’t like them enough to form opinions, or couldn’t organize my thoughts well enough to fairly elucidate them. But, now that the pressure of playing catch-up is over, maybe I’ll do a better job going forward. 11. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (3 stars) Merricat Blackwood, her older sister Constance, and their uncle Julian live in an expansive house that sits apart from a small […]

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2/24/2017 's CBR9 Review No:12 |

Not That Matthew Lewis

The Monk by Matthew Lewis

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 Although I do like the idea of Neville Longbottom penning gothic horror novellas late into the night in the Gryffindor common room.  But I also think Neville probably has more creativity than this. Part of my issue with this one is that I don’t know enough about gothic horror to determine if this is a cheeky spoof on the genre or if Lewis is all about cavalier bro-dudes and virginal women.  And, even though my copy of the book came with footnotes and an introduction, neither were very illuminating.  The intro claims that Lewis is having a joke, but I’m […]

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12/1/2015 's CBR7 Review No:73 |


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