Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“Was there no hope? the tigress seemed to be asking her. Will I always remain here? Will I never return home?”

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

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When Lucrezia, the third daughter of the Duke of Florence, is wed to Alfonso d’Este, she’s not sure what to expect – but whatever it was, it was certainly not that he was going to want her dead before they’d been married a year. I haven’t read Maggie O’Farrell’s work before, but she’s been on my radar after the success of Hamnet, and so when I saw The Marriage Portrait offered as a ‘lucky day’ loan from my library, I snapped it up. Hurrah for […]

A fascinating historical woman I knew nothing about before and now want to tell everyone about her.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray

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I forget how I found out about The Personal Librarian but as I read about it, knew it was perfect for my book club.  Historical fiction – Check, Talented woman – Check, About a library and books – Check.  We haven’t met up yet so I don’t know the other’s reactions but I found it a fascinating read that delivered on the promises of the book blurbs.  Author, Pam Jenoff, has this to say, “An extraordinary tale that is both brilliant historical fiction and an important […]

The LONG Long Goodbye

The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis

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I picked this up thanks in large part to Megan Abbott’s review. It’s not her fault, though, that I didn’t like it. For Goodreads, Abbott talked about the book’s similarities to Robert Altman’s movie The Long Goodbye, mostly in terms of aesthetics, a forgotten Los Angeles, as well as the narrator’s anxiety. The Long Goodbye is one of my all time favorite movies, Chandler but better. So I had to grab this. And yeah, she is right that it gets the aesthetics well. I deeply felt […]

Old Sins Cast Long Shadows

Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham

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A decade after World War 2, Rachel Perlman may have moved to New York City and gotten married, but she is still haunted by her experiences as a Jewish girl hiding in plain sight in Berlin and the death of her mother. Despite what the blurb led me to expect, this book is not a World War 2 novel – at least, not exactly. Though Rachel’s experiences in Berlin hang over the entirety of the story, we spend most our time with her grappling with […]

February-March 2024 Leftovers

The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones

A Lowcountry Bride by Preslaysa Williams

Bone White by Ronald Malfi

Alexander the Great by Phillip Freeman

Nero: Matricide, Murder and Music in Imperial Rome by Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth

Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James

A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block

The Killing Kind by John Connolly

Shōgun by James Clavell

Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark

A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime by Casey Sherman

Village in the Dark by Iris Yamashita

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland

The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age by Michael Woolraich

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Rain, rain, go away. I thought my reading count looked too low and then I realized I didn’t do leftovers for February, so here’s Feb-March combined. The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and Rise of the Tudors ***** Jones is such a talented historian. Gets all the important stuff of the Wars of the Roses in great detail and lets the story entertain. His Templars book will soon be on my radar. A Lowcountry Bride**** Had to read this for a library […]

One day your country is yours, and the next it isn’t.

Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

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No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.” ― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark The odds had been stacked against us from the start: we had no manual, no one to show us the way. Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys. How were we supposed to know what to do? Did we even believe […]



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