Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The Downfall of Anne Boleyn

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

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Bring Up the Bodies starts shortly after the end of Wolf Hall. Thomas Cromwell and King Henry VIII are guests of the Seymours at their estate, Wolf Hall. In the previous book, Thomas had developed feelings for Jane Seymour and had considered asking the king for permission to wed. But now Henry has begun to spend time with Jane, at the not-so-subtle encouragement of her family, and to tire of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, which has not yielded the son he so desperately wants. […]

Woof Hall

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

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Let’s get this out of the way, I did not finish Wolf Hall. Not for lack of trying, I promise. But I got 75% of the way through, and was trying to force my way to the end before it was due at the library, when i just realized that I wasn’t enjoying or even absorbing anything I was reading, so what was the point? Anyway, Wolf Hall is about Thomas Cromwell, a somewhat mysterious figure from English history. He rose from humble beginnings to […]

Rolling Heads

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel

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What you must never forget about this one is that you’re still in Wolf Hall. That’s trite, I know! But I can’t think of what else to say because as I reoriented my perspective on reading this, its power really hit me. I read Wolf Hall five years ago, at a different period in my life and thought it was just ok. Appreciated what it was doing but I didn’t have the focus to engage with it like I should have. Time and age tend to confer […]

there were MORE (there are always more)

Compulsory by Martha Wells

Forever Your Rogue by Erin Langston

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel

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Compulsory by Martha Wells Murderbot shortly returns, in a book that I was happy to pay $0.99 for to get as much of the world as I possibly could. As someone who spent all last week happily reading and then having to spring out of bed/sofa to catch my father about to trip or someone who needed help with something that definitely didn’t NEED my help but probably justified it, I understand exactly where Murderbot is coming from and where it wants to go (back […]

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and Learning to Talk

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel

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Families! Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – 3/5 Stars I went looking for some pictures of David Sedaris and his family after listening to the audiobook here and stumbled upon the article about the suicide of his sister Tiffany. Along with that article came some additional writings by people responding to it. This book is probably the strongest version of “You Can’t Go Home Again” in Sedaris’s writing, especially as it pertains not only to his sister, but to various of conversation represented […]

Mantel Pieces – Hilary Mantel (2021)

Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel

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I will be honest, you have to be into this for the book to be enjoyable. I know that’s true about any book, but unlike a lot of essay collections from authors, whether they’re themed or not, this one is very particular about what it is, that it’s harder to dip in an out of this one like you might for a different kind of book. These are reprinted and collected essays from Hilary Mantel that she wrote for the London Review of Books, and […]



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