Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Great if you like Wes Anderson but unfortunately, I don’t. 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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On a beautiful June day in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is taken from the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs to the Hotel Metropol. He enjoys the views of Moscow from the windows of his car. It will be the last time in decades that he is to set foot outside the doors of the hotel; the Commissariat, torn between Alexander’s nobility status on the one hand and his work as a revolutionary poet on the other, has sentenced him to house arrest. And so the […]

The devil went down to Moscow

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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This was my first ‘Russian master’ novel, and without having read any others, I am here to tell you: start with this one: it was so.much.fun! (Cbr13bingo Gateway square). These are things I feel like I have heard no one ever utter about War and Peace or Anna Karenina, and so I feel like if you’re going to start somewhere, it should be somewhere fun. The Master and Margarita is like a Eugene Ionesco absurdist play in novel form, with the focus on Stalinist Russia. […]

So mom went to the US to study, and all I got was a year of coming-of-age

A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova

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Sadly, sometimes a book has run its course with us at the store and we prep it for returns. Occasionally, I grab one (or six, but this review is about just one) and see if I can give it a second chance.  And while I cannot give A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tolstikova a second chance at the store, I can let you fine folks know about it. I did not love this book. Part novel, part picture book, part graphic novel, part art […]

Tales from the Eloise omnibus, part 2: Moscow is full of black caviar from the Caspian Sea and spies

Eloise in Moscow by Kay Thompson (author), Hilary Knight (illustrator)

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Following on the heels of Eloise at Christmastime is the re-read of Eloise in Moscow.  Eloise has come to Moscow in style, riding in the Rolls Royce her grandmother had sent because, “you only go to Moscow once”.  She is accompanied by Nanny, Weenie (the dog), but Skipperdee  (the turtle) develops a nervous cough and is sent by diplomatic pouch back to the Plaza hotel in NYC.  No reason is given for the visit beyond vague mention of Eloise being a diplomat child and once again her […]



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