Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A Gut-Churning Good Time

The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman

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What a ride! Big thanks to badkittyuno for putting this gem on my radar. Or, in the parlance of this book, allowing me to seek of the poisons of this tome via unicorn horn. We, as humans, have done some pretty vile things to ourselves and others since…pretty much the dawn of time. The Royal Art of Poison illustrates-in graphic detail- the poisonous things that people (mostly royalty, but the common man is capable of critical nastiness as well) have been doing intentionally and accidentally to […]

Some Things You Will Remember, Some Things Stay Sweet Forever

The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick

The Winter Crown by Elizabeth Chadwick

The Autumn Throne by Elizabeth Chadwick

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Eleanor of Aquitaine has been a personal hero of mine since I was a kid. At some point in time–maybe around age 10 or 11?–I read E.L. Konigsberg’s A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, which I adored. ADORED, and read a million times, although I never bothered to learn what miniver was until literally yesterday. For those who don’t know, Eleanor of Aquitaine was a queen in the Middle Ages. First she was the queen of France, married to Louis VII. Later, their marriage […]

Time Travel With Heart (and Heartbreak)

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I’ve read this book before (maybe twice before) but it had been so long that I felt it was due for a re-read and review. Obviously, I’m a fan.  Connie Willis can be a bit verbose and repetitive here and there, but I eat it all up anyway.  (I also love J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, T.H. White, and George R.R. Martin, so I can deal with a bit of verbosity and lengthy description). The story starts at Oxford University in the year 2054 in a […]

“Double, double, toil and trouble…”

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Just to be clear, I am not going to include any spoiler warnings for this play, since it’s somewhere between 406-416 years old (sources seem to disagree exactly when it was written). If, for some reason, you’re worried about having major plot points or deaths (there’s a whole bunch, guys) ruined for you, then it’s probably best that you skip this review entirely. So Macbeth or the Scottish play. Despite having English lit as my minor at university, and Scottish history as part of my […]

On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. ‘Tis a silly place.

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Fun fact: the ‘doom’ in ‘doomsday book’ has little to do with the word ‘doom’ as in ‘gloom and doom’, but comes from the Latin ‘domus’ or house. I have to admit, though, that it sounds wonderfully creepy, which I suppose is the only reason Connie Willis chose it as the title to her novel as it has nothing to do with the early medieval document. It’s not even set in the same period of time. The year is 2055, the place is Oxford. Historians […]



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