Cannonball Read 15

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You don’t sail a thousand ships, you pulverize them

Possession by Adriana Anders

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I don’t know why I love marriage in trouble stories so much, but I do. Possession, a fake marriage in real trouble, is a nice twist on the trope. Possession is a book that I probably wouldn’t have read from a different author, but Anders takes all the elements that usually make me wary and deals with them very well. This is a kink heavy erotic romance with damaged man who is solely responsible for the marriage being in trouble. Really good kink is hard […]

Blackout. The Whale has eaten me. I repeat the Whale has eaten me and I am now dead. #CBRBINGO – White Whale

Possession by A.S. Byatt

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This review will not be long, for this book has defeated me, and in such a way that I don’t overly feel like enumerating what went wrong here. The short answer is most likely that I’m just not the right reader for this book (and this author, which is why I’ve deleted The Children’s Book from my TBR). I bought this ages ago, probably over a decade, and finally gave it a try about six years ago. I got 48 pages in before I said I’d […]

“A kiss might be blameless, so long as it was the other person doing the leaning. Was it your fault, really, if someone else kissed you?”

The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky

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What if A.S. Byatt’s Possession popped up again in the internet age? The Portrait of a Mirror answers that question with a heaping helping of Greek mythology to boot. Diana, Wes, Dale, and Vivien are spoiled obsessives staring at themselves into eternity. They are slimy people, but you know what? I don’t care! I want them to be happy in their clandestine adventures, and I want them to be miserable in their public falling outs! Wes and Diana are married. Their relationship is a constant sparring match that […]

He had no idea who she might be.

Possession by AS Byatt

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This is one of those books that going into it, I knew would require a lot of careful reading, patience, and oddly, tapping into some old resentments to enjoy it. I spent a lot of years in and around English departments at multiple levels. I was never a professor, but I’ve seen plenty of drama, and this book is dramatic in some ways, but understated as well. The novel begins with Roland Michell reading a 150 year old copy of Vico’s The New Science. This […]

My Possession Obsession

Possession by A.S. Byatt

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Possession is a mesmerizing story, or two stories, steeped in mystery, secrecy and discovery. Set in both the modern world and the Victorian age, Possession tells the parallel stories of characters whose intellectual pursuits bring them together but also spark jealousies alongside great creativity. Byatt’s writing is genius. The detail and creativity, the imagination, she brings to her work is simply breathtaking. The novel begins in London, circa 1990. Roland is a scholar/academic, living with longtime girlfriend Val in rather dire straits. His field is […]

A Little Book On Demon Possession

Come Closer by Sara Gran

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Whew! This little book was a ride. Clocking in at only 190 pages, our story follows Amanda, an architect with a happy, boring life that she loves. She’s a young, married professional with a nice loft and an aspiring future until little things start happening…..hearing noises, a sudden desire to start smoking, unexplained purchases, an intense need to steal….but things still easily explained away, or so Amanda thinks. Gran’s delightfully minimal style weaves us through the mind of a woman unraveling. Told in the first […]



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