Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The Show Improves the Faults of the Book

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

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The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading this book and, just like the first time I read it, I’m conflicted about it. For the first half of the book I find the protagonist, Lyra Belacqua, obnoxious and unrelatable. I’m not a fan of the precocious child protagonist archetype. Maybe if I had read this as a kid and wasn’t looking at her through adult eyes it might be different. Once Lyra begins her quest […]

CBR Diversions – Dream Casting

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As a lover of all things pop culture, I love to read and watch book adaptations on the big and small screen. I first saw HBO’s True Blood series before absolutely devouring the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books. Same for The Golden Compass, which was panned by critics, but led to me reading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. The screen versions captivated me and I simply had to know the literary origins of the characters. When I read a particularly engaging novel, […]

An adventure in name, but almost not in reality

The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship by Philip Pullman

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The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship by Philip Pullman had a lot of potential. But it never really got off the ground. Sure, it had a James Bond meets every Ghost Ship story you know. And sure, the graphic novel illustrations were nice. Fred Fordham did To Kill A Mockingbird that I enjoyed. And I would like to see his adaptation of The Great Gatsby this summer. But something about the overall package never “did it” for me. The story has elements of […]

I can see the future, it’s a real dark place

The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

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Oh, how I loved the first book in this trilogy (La Belle Sauvage)! It was one of my favorite books of 2018, and I had such high hopes for The Secret Commonwealth. Maybe, had my expectations been a little lower, I would have enjoyed this more. Sadly, The Secret Commonwealth ended up being rather disappointing. The Secret Commonwealth starts with Lyra Silvertongue, now in her early 20s, as a student St. Sophia’s College in Oxford. We also learn in the first part of the book […]

“You’re in a world full of color and you want to see it in black and white.”

The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2) by Philip Pullman

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Firstly, this was very compelling. I haven’t spent really any time wondering what happened to Lyra since we last left her, if I’m being honest (I liked that nebulous hopefulness at the end of Amber Spyglass that let you assume she would do the work of building the Republic of Heaven on earth, that she would eventually find love that would let her move on from Will, etc.). But as soon as she and Pan appeared on the page, I realized that I had missed them and […]

A strange little prelude of a book.

La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust, #1) by Philip Pullman

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I liked this! It was different than I was expecting. I’m almost more excited for the second two books than I was for this one, though. I remember being puzzled when this book series was announced. What more could there possibly be of this story to tell? And also, it was going to be a prequel AND a sequel series, somehow. It just felt bizarre to me, so I shrugged in my mind and then moved on with my life. Well, it all makes sense […]



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