Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A Beautiful, Quiet, Reflective Book

The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, translated by Alison McCullough

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CW: violent animal death This is a quiet, reflective book with beautiful, emotionally restrained prose that somehow still manages to be gently emotional. Nils Vik wakes up on what he knows will be the last day of his life and goes about his normal daily routine. He is a ferryman in Norway, someone who has spent decades carrying people across a fjord, and on this final day he follows a familiar route while also collecting the dead. These are former ferry passengers he once knew, […]

Living in Her Shadow

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

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Rebecca is often presented as a gothic novel, but it’s actually hard to pin down the genre. It has some gothic elements, some suspenseful elements, a marriage plot. Ultimately, I would characterize it as psychologically suspenseful litfic. The psychological suspense relates to the narrator, who remains unnamed for the entirety of the book. Twenty-one at the start of the novel, she is working as a lady’s “companion” in Monte Carlo, when she meets and falls in love with widower Maxim de Winter, and they marry within […]

Letters from the Winter of Life

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

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I almost wish I had waited until January to read this, so I could start my year with a 5-star read, which this was—absolutely and unexpectedly. The idea of an epistolary novel rarely appeals to me, but I’m so glad I gave this one a try. Our main letter writer is Sybil, who is 73 when the book starts, but it spans several years. She writes to just about anyone and everyone, including her brother, a neighbor, the son of a former colleague, a customer […]

No Wings Needed, but Maybe a Better Editor?

We Need No Wings by Ann Dávila Cardinal

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cbr17bingo – Rec’d (found on a list of book suggestions for National Hispanic Heritage Month) I’m going to let the first line of the book do some heavy lifting here: “The first time Tere Sánchez levitated, she was in the garden.” Tere is a 60-year-old widow who has been grieving her husband’s death for the past year while taking a leave from her work as a professor. Understandably, the levitation freaks her out. She recalls that her family is distantly related to Saint Teresa of […]

Wedding Guests Bring the Drama

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

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Finishing this book also meant finishing my first buddy read with my mom, which was a fun experience, and I enjoyed the book. In a time of crisis, main character Phoebe has booked an expensive hotel, and upon arriving learns that due to a hotel oversight, she is the only guest who is not there for a wedding. Phoebe is grieving the end of her marriage, among other losses, and soon comes into contact with the bride, Lila. Through Lila, Phoebe slowly becomes sucked into […]

Not Bad, but Not for Me

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

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This was not a bad book, but it has confirmed that I am not the right audience for Sally Rooney. I didn’t really care for Normal People but thought I’d give this a chance because some people who didn’t like Normal People did like this one. And I did indeed prefer Intermezzo, but not as much as I’d hoped. A large part of the problem is that I disliked Peter, one of the POV characters. His self-pity, while realistic in its duration, grew old, and I didn’t care for […]



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