Cannonball Read 11

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Oh Margaret. You can do so many things, but rapping is not one of them. (CBR 11 Bingo: Remix)

Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold by Margaret Atwood

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I love a good Shakespearean remix. I devour everything Margaret Atwood has to offer. I was delighted to come across Hag-Seed, as I am still haunted by her addition to the Canongate Myth Series (Penelopiad) 14 years after reading. Atwood sets her storm in the “summer-stock” theater world of world of far flung Canada. Our Prospero is a wrongfully toppled director of a prestigious theater; toppled by schemes, toppled by loss, and toppled by grief. His island takes the form of a prison, where he rises once again as the lord of all he sees by teaching inmates literacy through Shakespeare. They’ve […]

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8/17/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:10 |

A revenge plot that thankfully goes completely wrong

Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah Maclean

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Felicity Faircloth may be the daughter of an Earl, but she is now on the fringes of society and her family desperately need her to land a rich husband, sooner rather than later, please. She’s not at all happy to discover just how dire the family’s finances are (and that they’ve kept the truth from her for over a year), but she may have just doomed them all, but telling a very inconvenient lie at a ball held by the reclusive Duke of Marwick. The lie – that she’s in fact already betrothed to marry him. Imagine her surprise when […]

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12/25/2018 's CBR10 Review No:106 |

The play’s the thing

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

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CBR10Bingo: This Old Thing (The Tempest) and Birthday (Hag-Seed) I’m a big fan of Margaret Atwood’s novels. I haven’t read everything she’s written, but I have a shelf full of her books and have loved all but one (sorry, The Heart Goes Last). I always watch for her new releases, and she’s one of the rare exceptions I’ll make to buy hardcover. When Hag-Seed came out a few years ago, I was all excited and ready to buy, until I looked at the cover blurb and saw that it was a modern re-telling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play that […]

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9/8/2018 's CBR10 Review No:51 |

Being kidnapped on your wedding night and sent to a prison camp in Australia – gonna have a bad time

The Sins of Lord Lockwood by Meredith Duran

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William “Liam” Devaliant, the fifth Earl of Lockwood, is overpowered and kidnapped on his wedding night in Scotland, taken south and chained onto a prison hulk on its way to Australia. No one believes his mad story about being an earl, or if they do, they don’t care. Four years later, he’s back in London, a very changed man, determined to enact his revenge on the man behind the plot to have him abducted, his own cousin. All the male retainers in his household are basically former convicts who survived along with them. In the eight months since his return […]

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3/19/2018 's CBR10 Review No:22 |

There was no sign of sympathy or surprise

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

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This is a strange little collection of stories Of course, I was immediately suspect because it was called “tales” but so be it. I read it anyway. In the first story, a woman is waiting to order two strawberry cakes in memorial of her dead son’s birthday twelve years ago. As she waits, little moments remind her  of various things connected to his life and death. She waits but no one is actually helping any customers. In another story, the road has been covered in tomatoes as a result of a terrible car accident, but a woman is too focused […]

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3/4/2017 's CBR9 Review No:73 |

“Fool that I am,” said he, “that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself.”

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

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Hi, remember when our book club discussion for this book was December 1st but I didn’t finish the book until January 23rd? And also how I’ve been reading it since November 13th? Because I do. I definitely remember all of that. Ultimately, I’m really glad I did the audio version of this book. I don’t think I could have finished it otherwise. I previously got about 1/3 of the way through this book when I tried reading it in high school, but it defeated me then. The beginning 20% or so, as well as the last 30% this time were riveting. I would make excuses […]

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2/1/2017 's CBR9 Review No:10 |

The book that ate November (The Count of Monte Cristo)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

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4.5 stars Young sailor Edmond Dantés is well-meaning, kind and really rather naive, wanting nothing more than to make enough money to take care of his elderly father and marry his beloved Mercedes. There are other, less well-meaning people in his life who want what he has and are prepared to frame Dantés for treason to get these things. While celebrating his engagement to Mercedes, Dantés is arrested, charged with aiding in a plot to restore the exiled Napoleon to the throne. The anonymous scheming may have come to nought, except a letter in Dantés’ possession frames the father of […]

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12/26/2016 's CBR8 Review No:125 |

“Amory Lorch, Cersei Lannister, Chiswyck, Dunsen, Gregor Clegane, Ilyn Payne, Joffrey Baratheon, Meryn Trant, Forel Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, The Hound, The Tickler, Weese”…

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

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They broke the mold after Dumas wrote “The Count of Monte Cristo.” There will never be a revenge plot as ambitious, as smooth, as Rube Goldbergian, as violent, as tense, or as passionate as this. This is the Ur Revenge Plot. I devoured this book. Inhaled it. And it’s partly because my brain melted a bit after the election, and then I was doggedly rebuilding my spirits with Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark” (TBR) (GET OFF MY BACK), and then it was Thanksgiving, and I do a whole thing, because Thanksgiving is my Superbowl. Whatever. Anyway, I started on Saturday […]

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12/1/2016 's CBR8 Review No:44 |


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