Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Natalie Haynes (1)

Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes

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“When Harry Hamlin stood behind the pillar in the darkness of Medusa’s lair in the Ray Harryhausen film Clash of the Titans, flames flickering off his shield, his face glistening with sweat, my brother and I were transfixed.” So begins Natalie Haynes’s book Pandora’s Jar, which is not a retelling of myths like other of her novels or even much to say about Perseus even. Instead, the book is a reinvestigation (which often feels like a good, fun undergraduate lecture) of the ways in which various […]

“News always reached Miss Marple, one way or another.”

Marple: Twelve New Stories by Various

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I would read more of these Agatha Christie short story collections featuring notable authors, for sure. Even the ones where Americans tried and failed to capture that British Marple feeling were entertaining in their failure. But most of these stories were pretty successful! One nailed it completely. Highlights for me were the stories from Ruth Ware (I know!), Naomi Alderman, Elly Griffiths, Kate Mosse, and Leigh Bardugo. This may be the easy way out, but I’ve just copied and pasted my Goodreads status update mini-reviews […]

“I have picked up the old stories and I have shaken them until the hidden women appear in plain sight. I have celebrated them in song because they have waited long enough.”

A Thousand Suns by Natalie Haynes

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  In one word: Refreshing Cannonball Read Bingo: Mythic Y’all. Y’ALL. I HAVE BEEN SO FAR BEHIND IN REVIEWS FOR LIKE TWO MONTHS AND WITH THIS ONE I AM ALL CAUGHT UP AND I HAVE MY FIRST BINGO YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. Thank you. Where was I? Ah yes. The book! A Thousand Ships was one I found on the new releases shelf at my library and a) it looked pretty and b) was recommended on the cover by Madeline Miller, author of Circe, and c) I was […]

Kind of like The Secret History…..

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A debut novel and one picked as an Amazon Rising Star this year, Haynes has written something that I feel can’t help but draw comparisons to The Secret History. Our narrator, Alex Morris, has lost her fiancé in horrific circumstances and to help recover, leaves her London life behind, moves to Edinburgh and takes a job at a Pupil Referral Unit, a unit run by one of her best friends from her University days. One particular class of five awkward, wayward, unpleasant and yes violent teens gets […]



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