Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A murder mystery around a mythical history

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

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It’s an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don’t want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed. Very odd, isn’t it. […]

It Took 37 Years to Finish This Book

The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey

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CBR – Cityscape (London) When I was 15, I went to a choral camp in Pennsylvania. I lived in a city just outside the Bronx and hadn’t traveled very much; mostly to my grandparents’ houses in New Jersey and Massachusetts. I remember being just terrified on the ride there and overcome with shyness once I arrived. I was an alto, but a poor one. While I played the flute and could read music, I couldn’t read music when I sang. The camp was directed by […]

Persistence of Time

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

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It’s official: I like Josephine Tey. It’s also official: I am not a fan of the classic British mystery novel. Josephine Tey is yet another writer I’ve been meaning to come back to for a long time. I finished The Daughter of Time in one day, two separate sittings. The premise was simple but the execution took my breath away. I gave myself a headache straining to read from page-to-page. The Franchise Affair is a slightly more conventional mystery albeit with an interesting twist: a young girl claims to […]

A rehash and a rehash

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Lost City of Z – 3/5 stars This promised a lot more than it delivered I felt like. This happened for a few different reasons. One, I think it’s a nearly impossible task to write a satisfyingly concluding recounting of a set of explorations that disappeared unless you 100% figure out what happened and find direct evidence, and despite whatever kind of overly positive spin at the end, I just don’t think it was able to do so. Two, not only was most of this […]

Alternative Title: Miss Pym is an Awful House Guest, For Many Reasons

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 Tey was mostly overshadowed in her lifetime by making the mistake of writing mystery novels around the same time as Agatha Christie.  I first picked up a Tey book a few years ago (it was The Franchise Affair) and was somewhat surprised that Tey was kind of a best kept secret.  And then I read Miss Pym Disposes and was disappointed.  Of course, in my super scientific sample size of two, this just leaves Tey at a wash. Miss Pym miraculously wrote a book about […]



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