Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


The Woman, The Myth, The Legend

Cleopatra, A Life by Stacey Schiff

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When in Egypt, amirite? I was going to pit this as a battle of two Cleopatra books with the Shakespeare play but it turns out I had a lot to say so I ended up splitting them. For the best I think, as they’re both so different- Shakespeare’s play is one layer in the myths of this real historical woman that Schiff is trying to dig through. In that context, Shakespeare is maybe one of the best known mythmakers; his play helped carry the myth […]

Housewives, They Are Desperate…

One of Us is Dead by Jeneva Rose

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Read as part of CBR14 Bingo: recommended. This book was recommended by author May Cobb, whose “My Summer Darlings” is one of the best things I read this year. I was looking for a female-focused thriller with a similar lack of inhibition.  Ok, right off the bat, this book is bonkers. If you looking at the premise and expecting any degree of verisimilitude, give this a hard pass. But it’s the willingness to lean into its bonkers-ness (?), to go over the top and just […]

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

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I love Anna Quindlen.  I’ve read all of her fiction and followed her Newsweek columns for years.  She has an absolute gift for translating the triumphs and heartbreaks of everyday Americans into gentle prose.  I was mesmerized by Miller’s Valley, and despite its sad story, it felt like a warm blanket. This is Mimi Miller’s story, as she comes of age in the 60s and 70s in Miller’s Valley, a dying farm community in Pennsylvania.  The government, promising progress and recreation, pushes the residents to sell […]

“It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now.”

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During the decade in which the Harry Potter series was published I was a college student, a new nurse, a young bride, a new homeowner, and finally, a mother.  What I was NOT was someone committed to thousands of pages of a single series.  Obviously, from the tremendous buzz, I knew I was missing out.  But in the hours spent in the rocking chair while reading to my new daughter, I made a decision.  When she turned 8, we’d start reading it together.  I wouldn’t […]



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