Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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If glass work is men’s work, why did one woman revive the lost art of millefiori?

A Thousand Glass Flowers: Marietta Barovier and the Invention of the Rosetta Bead by Evan Turk

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I have a ton of reader copies that are picture books. The great thing about them is you can read one or two (or three) at lunch. This particular picture book, A Thousand Glass Flowers: Marietta Barovier and the Invention of the Rosetta Bead took a little longer than usual. Partly because of that really long title! However, once you get into Evan Turk’s story, you know it was worth it. As a child of the 15th century Italy, Marietta was fascinated by her father’s […]

“He breathed in my face the coffee he’d just drunk, mingled with the odor of his gums.”

A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

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1970s Naples: a thirteen year old girl of privilege is suddenly removed from her seaside home and returned to a cramped and dirty apartment outside the city.  The key word here is “returned”; our heroine has been sent “home” to a place that she never knew. She spent her entire life living with her glamorous mother and policeman father, only to have that reality shattered in one afternoon when the man she knew as her father bundles her and all of her belongings into the […]

Solve your longing for travel and a mystery

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon

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I picked this up from my library just before everything shut down. Having read the book, I instantly regretted having gotten just the first in the series.  This book is a little slow to get started, but once you are in it, it is everything you want in a police detective mystery. Bonus that it takes place in Venice, Italy, so while no one can physically visit right now, this book will take you there in your mind. Police Commissario Guido Brunetti finds himself investigating […]

Detective of the People

The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Scascia

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There are plenty of crime novels at home and abroad that function as social critiques for their nation/state/metropolitan setting. Crime fiction is a good stalking horse for social commentary, because much of what passes for social commentary in crime fiction focuses on injustice real or perceived: racism, gender and economic inequality, urban decay, social despair, etc. Some books are better than others at doing this. All could take a lesson from Leonardo Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl. Less a murder mystery and more an examination […]

Call and Answer

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

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What a lovely read. The language was lovely, almost lyrical. Very little actually happens but the author takes us on such a journey that we believe so much has happened. This is a relatively short review, simply to resist giving away the pieces of the book you should enjoy by reading it yourself. Elio is a young man falling for an older man who is visiting his house over the summer. The story slowly builds into an obsession. The tension is built through everything that […]



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