Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Whispering Hands

The Raging Quiet by Sherryl Jordan

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I’m currently back living at my mother’s place, (Covid, landlord troubles, suffocating monotony of the big city, it’s a long and sad story) but the good thing about it is, that it gives me ample opportunity to revisit my favourite childhood books! That’s how I picked up The Raging Quiet again, a story about a teenager, who marries a much older and wealthier man, only to be widowed after a few days and now stranded in a village that’s behaving more than hostile towards her. […]

A Tale of Two Sisters

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

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A bestselling historical fiction novel set during World War II, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is best if you only think of it as fiction. Hannah may have researched the details of France and WWII, but her characters initially struck me as stereotypical: Vianne, the older responsible sister Isabelle, the beautiful and spontaneous troubled teen Gaetan, the striking escaped prisoner, headed to the French resistance movement The broken and brooding father The handsome, kind Nazi  Thankfully, Hannah developed more complex emotions and motivations for her […]

“On a little street in Singapore We’d meet beside a lotus-covered door”

The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

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  This book is what I call a “cozy-ish mystery.” It’s not an examination of the darkest parts of humanity, nor does it take place entirely in a knitting shop in a cozy New England hamlet. It’s just about the perfect thing for me when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the world or my previous read or both. The murder still feels important to the story without getting you bogged down in misery. This is the first in the Crown Colony series and I’ve added the […]

Good book. Crap timing

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

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  Reading this book in early/mid-March 2020 was a huge error in judgement on my part.  I guess I thought immersing myself in a plague story would lessen my anxieties about the real world. It…didn’t work.  Having said this, Year of Wonders was truly a captivating read with a dynamic heroine who faces the horrors of the plague on and comes out on the other side deeply changed. Anna Frith is a somewhat timid young widow in a small English village who is making ends […]

A badass female spy network? What’s not to love?!

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

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CBR11 Bingo – Far and Away   This category is a bit broad, but hopefully a novel set on a different continent in a different time period is far enough away? 🙂 The Alice Network starts off with American co-ed Charlotte (Charlie) St. Clair travelling to Europe to get “a little problem” taken care of (1947 translation: she done got knocked up out of wedlock and her wealthy parents are insisting on an abortion in Switzerland). Charlie’s motivations for agreeing to the trip to Europe […]

Trees did not talk back, or willfully disobey, or laugh at him. They were not here to torment him; indeed, they were not here for him at all.

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I enjoy reading fiction that has to do in some way with horticulture or nature. Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior and Prodigal Summer are two of my favorites. The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall and The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin are also both really good. I’m not sure what you would call this  genre, but I am always on the look out for this kind of book (Hint hint: any recommendations?) This led me to Chevalier’s “At the Edge of the Orchard”. This is going to be a love/hate review. Part of the story […]



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