Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I Think It’s Me

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

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This review has been difficult to write because this book was good but I didn’t like it. I’m much better when I definitely love or definitely hate something! And this was just…frustrating for me. The story is set over about a week’s time in 1926 London, following a pair of girls who have runaway from York to become stars and inevitably get swallowed in the nightclub scene. And also the ex-field nurse turned librarian who goes to find them. And also the notorious nightclub owner. […]

Nothing she writes will be Life after Life for me

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

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I loved Life After Life – I think it’s still in my top books, and I’ll keep recommending it (go ahead, find it at your library and enjoy it!). But everything else I’ve read of Atkinson has not reached that level of enjoyment for me. I think it’s that (unfair?) comparison that makes this book a little tough to review for me. This book is fine! It’s generally interesting and the writing is mostly good (although there I have some quibbles). But it lacks that something […]

Joys and Sorrows of London

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

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Happy Cannonball Read 15! This isn’t my first read of 2023, but it’s the first one that merited a review. Shrines of Gaiety is one I put down before Christmas because I didn’t have the time and wanted to fully engage with it. I picked it back up this week hoping it wouldn’t tail off…and it didn’t. Even the ending, which many didn’t like, I enjoyed and I’m almost willing to forgive Kate Atkinson for her past transgressions as to why I can’t get into […]

“No point in thinking, you just have to get on with life. We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.”

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

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I will admit that I have been avoiding this book since it was published, but especially after I read a Sherlock fanfic one time* that was a riff on Life After Life, and which is one of the most emotionally traumatizing fics I’ve ever read, so by association I was pre-traumatized by this book. Also, one time I read the first Jackson Brodie mystery and I thought it was boring, so I thought this would be boring too. Happily, wrong on all fronts! *If you […]

How can life be so sweet and so sad all at the same time?

Behinds the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

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CBR Bingo: Rec’d Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson was recommended to me in a comment on my very first review in 2020 by andtheIToldYouSos. I had reviewed Atkinson’s Case Histories and thought it was okay. But andtheIToldYouSos encouraged me to read more of Atkinson’s work, particularly mentioning Behind the Scenes at the Museum. And boy howdy, I’m glad I did, because I really liked it. The book starts with maybe one of my all time favorite opening passages, told from the […]

Mixed Bag III

Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales by Michael Chabon et

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

This Telling by Cheryl Strayed

Sweet Virginia by Caroline Kepnes

Shine Pamela Shine by Kate Atkinson

Halfway to Free by Emma Donaghue

Graceful Burdens by Roxanna Gay

Bear Witness by Mark Gaitskill

The Contractors by Lisa Ko

Sun of a Beach by Mia Sosa

The Wonderful Adventure of Nils by Selma Lagerlof

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Thrilling Tales – 2/5 Stars I’ve read this book twice previously and more or less liked a lot of the stories. But this reread was pretty sour for a few reasons. The story collection is ostensibly a genre collection of adventure stories posed off of Michael Chabon’s childhood of reading such stories. There’s probably references in the introduction to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Edgar Wallace and other Edgars. And so, when I bought and read this story in college, I felt more or less that […]



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