Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Kind of Jealous I Didn’t Apply for that Rhodes Scholarship

My Oxford Year by Julia Wheelan

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My third book for 2019 followed a year in the life of 24 year old Ella as she starts her journey as a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford. Ella is a young prodigy in American politics. She is young, driven, and has a plan for her entire life. She has wanted to spend a year in Oxford since she was a teenager, and her Rhodes year is her last hurrah before she has to get a job and tackle the real world. Of course, once she […]

The One I’ve Been Waiting For

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For most of CBR10, I’ve been in a real reading rut. While I’ve read plenty of books I liked, there have been only a few that met my criteria for The Kind of Book I Love to Read: The story is engrossing: I have to feel like I can’t put it down. It’s not just engrossing, but also evokes specific emotions: I love a book that makes me feel happy or excited, or that awakens my curiosity or makes me want to learn something new. […]

The Oxford English Dictionary Was Basically Wikipedia

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Fans of Comedy Central’s tv show “Drunk History” may be familiar with the story of Dr. William Minor: The Civil War doctor showed signs of struggling with mental health during and after the war (how could one not), and moved to London for a fresh start. Unfortunately, Dr. Minor suffered from the beliefs that all kinds of people were out to get him, and those beliefs led him to shoot an innocent stranger in cold blood. The American was institutionalized.  Concurrently, Professor James Murray was […]

A Heretic Monk and Murder at Oxford

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This is the first of S.J. Parris’ thrilling Tudor mysteries centered on the former Italian monk and philosopher/scientist Giordano Bruno. The battlefront of the novel is in England, where Elizabeth I is fighting to keep her reign secure from Catholic forces in Europe and within her own country that want to topple her and capture the throne for Mary, Elizabeth’s imprisoned cousin and Catholic Queen of Scots. This first book gives us some background on our unlikely hero; Bruno has been buried in an Italian […]



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