Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Oh just talk to each other, wont’ you?!

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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Connell and Marianne are classmates in high school. He is cool; she is not. He is popular; she is not. She comes from money, he does not. They both are bright. Despite their many differences, they are drawn to each other. And no matter what happens, they seem to always return to each other. Throughout Normal People, we get glimpses of their lives cycling through periods of coming together and drifting apart. This book was infuriating. Author Sally Rooney did a phenomenal job (maybe too […]

Ten mostly good fiction books

Normal people by Sally Rooney

Conversations with friends by Sally Rooney

The amateur marriage by Anne Tyler

The pull of the stars by Emma Donoghue

Middle England by Jonathan Coe

Holes by Louis Sachar

The princess bride by William Goldman

The legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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Normal people by Sally Rooney I’d watched the series before I read the book and yet the series didn’t put me off reading it. I suffered through it, just as I suffered through this book about Marianne and Connell. Two kids who go to the same school, and then later on to the same university, their lives entwined. We witness their strange dance as they struggle to communicate plainly with each other and fail again and again. Marianne is a broken person. Connell is sort […]

The stories we tell ourselves

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

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Conversations with Friends has earned the (dubious) honor of receiving my first 5-star review of the year. For the first 3-4 chapters in the book, I didn’t think it would, but it ended up being a compulsive read that kept popping up in my mind when I was doing other things. Conversations is a tight story about a young student, Frances, and her best friend (and ex-girlfriend) Bobbi, who meet and befriend Melissa, a journalist married to a handsome actor, Nick. As Frances is drawn into Melissa […]

“It was in my nature to absorb large volumes of information during times of distress, like I could master the distress through intellectual dominance.”

Mr Salary by Sally Rooney

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Oof. Sally Rooney can do more with 22 pages than others can do with 200. Sukie and Nathan are set to collide. They have been tangled up in each other’s lives since she was an infant and he attended her christening. Sukie’s mother is dead, her father is dying, and she has been living on-and-off with Nathan since she was 19. He’s older, wiser, and much wealthier. She’s been in Boston, and he picks her up from the airport. They are charged from the get […]

Are you Longing for some Longing?

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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This was one of Faintingviolet’s top reads of 2019, and I also desperately wanted to watch the Hulu show, especially after Dustin’s review.  They were both right- this book was great. If you haven’t seen the Hulu trailer, this is a teenage/college age lovestory, set first in Sligo, northwest Ireland, and later in Dublin.  The two main characters are flawed but compelling- Marianne is smart, witty, not particularly pretty and uninterested in what other people think about her.  She also has the fortune/misfortune of being […]

“I’ve been lonely my whole life, really.”

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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Cannonball Bingo – “Adaptation” (see below) Normal People (2016) by Sally Rooney has been on a number of lists, so I’d been aware of it for some time. However, some reviews had me wondering if I would enjoy it. Sometimes books are very well written but no fun to read. It wasn’t until Obama recommended Normal People as one of his favorite books of 2019 that I decided I needed to read it. And it also works for Cannonball Bingo! I am using Normal People to fill the “Adaptation” square […]



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