Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Shining Bright

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

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Sometime during the 1860s, young Rachel Verinder turns eighteen and for her birthday, receives a large diamond named The Moonstone. It is priceless and the guests at her birthday party revel in its opulence before retiring for the night. As they wake up the next morning, the Moonstone has vanished. Did one of the guests take it? One of the staff members? Why does Rachel refuse to cooperate in the investigation? Why is housemaid Rosanna Spearman suddenly so secretive? And what do the three Indian […]

Delightful, Jane Austen-esque mystery

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

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The Moonstone is essentially a Jane Austen novel crossed with a detective novel- the first ever detective novel!  This was an unexpected delight. The plot is very 19th century Britain: several years prior, an English military officer returned from his posting in India with dubious ownership over a very large diamond that had recently graced a Hindu temple.  When the diamond appeared to be cursed, the officer gifted it to his estranged niece, Rachel, in an act that might be malevolent or generous, depending on […]

The Subjective and the Objective

The Moonstone; As I Lay Dying; HHhH; three men in a boat by Wilkie Collins; William Faulkner; Laurent Binet; Jerome K Jerome

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I inadvertently picked up three novels that have a lot to say about authorship, narration, and the nature of reality as pertains to stories and storytelling. This novel is a small mystery (but a 500 page novel) about a maybe cursed diamond that was (definitely first stolen from an Indian village in British colonial India in the 1840s and then) maybe stolen from its “rightful” heir, Rachel, who was passed down the Moonstone by a hated and derided uncle who either was trying to win […]



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