Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Double Cannonballing on a re-read.

The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3) by Philip Pullman

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Still a four star read for me. Currently kicking myself for not writing this closer to when I finished. As per usual, I have forgotten what I wanted to say about it. I do think this is a good ending to the series. It doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, but I think it’s a fitting ending, for a story about loss of innocence (and how that’s not a bad thing), different kinds of love, and questioning authority. Some disjointed (spoiler-filled) thoughts: * […]

“It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It’s impossible.”

The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, #2) by Philip Pullman

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“What he couldn’t say was that he longed for his father as a lost child yearns for home. That comparison wouldn’t have occurred to him, because home was the place he kept safe for his mother, not the place others kept safe for him.” As a kid, I was really into this book. I ran across it in the library one day, years after I read the first one. I loved the whole parallel universes jag, and it was undercut with this darkness most of […]

Lyra is finally back

The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman

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Many, many years ago, my cousin recommended that I read The Golden Compass (1996) by Philip Pullman. As I began reading, I was skeptical. Every human has a little animal (called a daemon) that follows them around? I thought it was weird and wasn’t sure I would get into it. But as I continued reading, I became attached to the characters and immersed in the story. Now that it’s been well over a decade since I read The Golden Compass, I can remember very few details of the actual story, […]

A boy, his canoe, and the beginning

The Book of Dust Vol. 1 : La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

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I quickly and deeply fell in love with Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy.  The ending of the third book has me in tears each time I read it.  However, when I heard that he was writing a prequel with Lyra “at the centre of the story”,  I rolled my eyes.  We already have three books where she is a main character.  How much could have happened to her before the start of The Golden Compass?  Then last year a fellow Cannonballer warmly reviewed it (apologies, […]

I love revisiting books at different times in my life. Perspective is so weird.

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1) by Philip Pullman

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The last time I read this series, it was before I joined Goodreads, and way before I started reviewing books regularly, so it took me a minute to put my thoughts together. I’d never read this book critically before, only with the half-frightened fascination a kid has for something they find intriguing but don’t really understand, and then again when I was older, to try and relive that feeling. When I first read this book a year or so after it was published, it scared […]

Tony, informed, said: They love funerals.

The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick by Elizabeth Hardwick

We Live In Water by Jess Walter

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton

Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman

Elementals by AS Byatt

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New York Stories – 4/5 Stars I read Elizabeth Hardwick’s collected essays earlier this year. I also read her novel Sleepless Nights last year. This is a collection of stories that encompasses about 45-50 years worth of short stories edited and selected by Darryl Pinckney, another novelist and critic who also famously worked with and was friends with Hardwick. I read these stories in a variety of orders, and since they are not part of an intentional collection this blending and mixing up of the […]



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