Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Marriage Trap

The Widows of Malabar Hill: A Perveen Mistry Novel Book 1 by Sujata Massey

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According to the book jacket, this is “a mystery of 1920s India” and that was enough to make me very curious. “The Widows of Malabar Hill” is a murder mystery, and a fine one at that, but it is also a picture of Bombay (not sure why it’s Bombay and not Mumbai) shortly after WWI from the point of view of a young Parsi woman named Perveen Mistry. Through her, Sujata Massey immerses the reader in a world that straddles the traditional and the modern. It’s 1921 and the British still rule India, but independence movements are on the rise. […]

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5/15/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:20 |

Freedom and Chains

Chained by Lynne Kelly

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This is my Backlog book. I have been meaning to read this book for a while now. Once I started it, I realized I was rereading it. Which, I will say, fits this because I had forgotten about this gem called Chained by Lynne Kelly. To work off a debt, Hastin leaves his village in India to work as an elephant keeper for a man who wants to restart his circus. Innocent Hastin only sees a way to help his mother and ill sister, not the fact that there must be a reason for this man to need to start […]

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8/27/2018 's CBR10 Review No:322 |

A primer in immigration and the understanding of other: a second look at The Namesake

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

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August 2018 Review The Schaumburg library chose this book for a communitywide book for the fall, and thus it is also on my book club list. I read it five years back but decided to give it another go to have a refresher before the discussion. This go round, I “read” the audio format. First of all, I am SO PUMPED to live in a place that picked such a book to foist on the community. What an enlightening and refreshing book. It’s almost a primer for diversity and understanding of other and immigrants as Lahiri tells the story of […]

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8/8/2018 's CBR10 Review No:31 |

My first LOVE of the year

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

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 Y’all, I don’t really know where to start with this book. I loved it. And I don’t fully understand what I read? I devoured every word but also had a tough time picking it back up after I’d put it down. It was amazing and I am going to have a very hard time telling you why. I did not know the backstory on this one until I was almost through, but twenty years ago, the author Arundhati Roy broke onto the scene with her debut novel, The God of Small Things. It won major awards, seems to have attracted […]

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1/11/2018 's CBR10 Review No:4 |

A shapeshifter tale of violence & confusion over the ages

The Devourers by Indra Das

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Unfortunately, life happened, so it’s been a while since my last review. It took me an extra month to finish the last 60 pages of The Devourers! I did participate in our Cannonball Read book club discussion on time. Better late to review than never, I say. 😉  The Devourers was on several 2016 year end lists. I hadn’t read much contemporary fantasy, so was very intrigued to read it. I also love stories about shape-shifters (and most supernatural creatures). While reading the Kate Daniels’ series by Ilona Andrews, she introduced me to the concept of shifters with various cultures and forms. Rakshasas were shifters […]

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4/29/2017 's CBR9 Review No:3 |

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

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My friend M. found the beginning of this book to be quite pretentious. And it is.  It’s pretentious AF for the first 60 or so pages.  And it’s hard to read pretention too.  The first few pages, especially, seem to drag and serve no purpose other than to make you re-think your decision to read it. But, I’m here to tell you that, while the first part of The Marriage Plot is definitely pretentious, it’s pretentious for a reason.  The pretention of Madeline and her parents and her classmates at Brown, including her boyfriend Leonard and her want-to-be-boyfriend, Mitchell, all […]

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3/20/2017 's CBR9 Review No:10 |

“I am not all human women… you are what all women fear in this world”

The Devourers by Indra Das

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In my reading habits, I do not read too much fantasy. I have never been a fan of high fantasy, those works that are set in an alternate world. I struggled with The Hobbit for years before finally managing to get through the audio book last year, for example. I do better with “low” fantasy, stories set in the recognizable world which include magical or mythological elements, which is where books like Daughter of Smoke and Bone work much better for me. The Devourers, our Fantasy book club pick, should fit into that niche as well, but it really felt […]

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3/9/2017 's CBR9 Review No:12 |

Well that was….. different….

The Devourers by Indra Das

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Because of work craziness, March has been a gongshow month for me in terms of reading, but I was determined to get this one done before the 8th.  I’m in the group of those who voted for this selection, and I’m not 100% sure if I stand by it, or if I want to apologize to you all. I’ll go light on plot synopsis here, because this has already been reviewed and discussed lots here recently. Alok is approached one evening by a mysterious stranger who abruptly reveals himself to be a half-werewolf.  He hired Alok to transcribe several ancient scrolls […]

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3/7/2017 's CBR9 Review No:15 |


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