Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“My expectations for a husband had lowered.”

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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Trying to summarize this is hard, because there are a lot of different storylines and viewpoints.  We have Miryem, the daughter of a not-very-good moneylender. Oh, he’s a good man, too good to be a moneylender in fact, in that he’s not the best at collecting his money back.  Miryem eventually decides to take up the slack and collect the debts herself. Responsibility takes a toll on people, especially when you have to take that burden from someone else.  She idly makes a comment that she can turn to silver to gold, and that comment is heard by the wrong […]

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2/20/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:15 |

“We’re meant to go. We’re not meant to stay forever.”

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

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Holiday reading is my favorite, and I was fortunate to have a rip-roaring book to tear through this holiday. I was also pleased, per the title of this post, that it ended and it will not continue as a duology or trilogy. Naomi Novik developed an imaginative world populated with  interesting characters and an engaging story. I’m quite sure the characters continued living their lives after I closed the book, but I am also happy that all necessary loose ends were wrapped up so satisfactorily. Briefly, Agnieszka is a peasant girl who lives in a quiet village that is protected from an […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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1/3/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

2018 – I Can’t Quit You

American Street by Ibi Zoboi

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This last year, like many Cannonballers, I read more books than I got a chance to review and so this final review of 2018, which will end up being my first review of 2019, is a sort of odds and ends.  Here in no particular order are books that I read while in China, books I read while on vacation in Northern Wisconsin, and books I read during my fall and spring semesters that I just didn’t have time to write about at the time. However, I wanted to get something down about each one of these. [In terms of […]

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1/1/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

Turning Silver Into Gold

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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I was so excited to get Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik as part of the book exchange because I loved Uprooted and had read and enjoyed the first book in Novik’s Temeraire series this summer. This is a loose (very loose) retelling of Rumpelstiltskin set in a past both realistic and imaginary and involving three young women.  Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, and she takes over her father’s business when his inability to demand payment leaves her family almost destitute and her mother falls ill.  She turns out to be quite good at this job.  Wanda is […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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12/29/2018 's CBR10 Review No:35 |

My favourite book this year

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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Before this week, if you had told me that one of my favourite fantasy books I’ve ever read would be a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin of all things, I would have laughed in your face. But that is one way to describe Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, her follow-up to Uprooted (which was far and away one of my favourite books from a few years ago). Tonally, Spinning Silver is similar to Uprooted. Both feature a non-traditional European fantasy world, in that the Polish grounding for Uprooted and the Slavic folklore for Spinning Silver aren’t as common as Vikings or Regency or knights in armor. Both feature the kind of […]

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12/14/2018 's CBR10 Review No:43 |

Funny when you have to remind yourself about things that, not long ago, consumed your every thought.

Brass; Lethal White; The Friend; Black Powder War; And Still I Rise; Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now; Pedagogy of the Oppressed; The Ruin; How to be Creature; The Italian Girl: The Cost of Living by Xhenet Aliu; "Robert Galbraith"; Sigrid Nunez; Naomi Novik; Paulo Freire; Maya Angelou; Sy Montgomery; Dervla McTeirnan; Iris Murdoch; Deborah Levy

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Brass – 3/5 Stars So on the one hand this book falls a little into the generic kind of circa 1990s second generation immigrant American novel that was big for a good while. I recently read Charming Billy by Alice McDermott, which does this very thing. And then on the other hand, this book is a solidly written novel. Or rather, it is a novel, but it a challenging kind of narrative. For one, the story is good and interesting, but also a little typical and banal, if that’s possible to be both. Or maybe it’s banal and typical, but […]

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11/8/2018 's CBR10 Review No:397 |

Novik’s books aren’t just about magic; they are magic

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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Uprooted was one of my favorite books of the last few years, and possibly ever. Since I’d never read Novik’s Temeraire books, I had no idea if it was a particular stroke of genius from her, or if she’s just always been consistently great and I never knew. I still haven’t read Temeraire, but now that she’s 2/2 for me with Spinning Silver, the imperative to do so becomes more pressing. Here is the summary from Goodreads: “Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge […]

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11/5/2018 's CBR10 Review No:41 |

Naomi Novik is two for two in my book (I still need to read Temeraire!!)

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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I read most of this book in a day. It was so charming and lovely. In the vein of Uprooted, Spinning Silver is another loosely inspired retelling of a fairytale, this time Rumplestiltskin. I’m honestly not sure which book I liked better. It’s been a while since I read Uprooted, and this book is one of those that gets better in your head the longer you sit with it after you finish. Our Rumplestiltskin is actually one of our heroines, Miryem, the daughter of a moneylender (a historically Jewish profession, as usury was against Christian beliefs, though that didn’t stop them from borrowing […]

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8/27/2018 's CBR10 Review No:101 |


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