Cannonball Read 11

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“I have no interest in your orders, I have no interest in what was legal at the time”

The Huntress by Kate Quinn

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Bingo Square: History Schmistory Kate Quinn’s follow up to The Alice Network once again follows multiple timelines and perspectives, though the timelines are much closer together this time around and involve three people.  After a short prologue which includes the only part from the perspective of the titular huntress and a newspaper article introducing the war crimes the huntress committed during World War II, the novel alternates between the character views of Jordan, a teenage girl living in 1946 Boston.  Her widowed father, an antiquarian, has met a young refugee widow from Europe with a young daughter and quickly fallen […]

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7/30/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:11 |

Living in the Past

This Storm by James Ellroy

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I met James Ellroy when purchasing this book at a book signing. I was nervous, having heard plenty of stories about his uncouth behavior in public. But he was actually quite nice and gracious with his time. It seems to me that once he rides out his initial wave of anxiety and gets comfortable in a situation, he’s fine. Both of us being Lutheran, we joked about the great Martin Luther; he of course appreciating Luther’s vulgarity towards the Pope. Ellroy makes it clear that he lives in the past. He lives a monastic existence of no TV or much […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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6/20/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:46 |

Put the Needle on it

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

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Like about half the people I know, I have a father with an inexplicable fondness for all things World War II. Particularly films like A Bridge Too Far (which is a total snoozefest), but documentaries, too. Because I’ve spent one too many nights having to watch Hitler’s Secret Love Nest on the Discovery Channel I tend to steer away from the subject, particularly the dry, yes-it-was-all-rather-horrid approach of the British which they employed at least up until the 1980s. I do, however, have a subscription book service, so I sometimes read things I wouldn’t have otherwise picked up. Sometimes this […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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6/20/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:18 |

Based on the cover, you’d think this was about three friends. It’s really not, at all.

Lilac Girls: A Novel by Martha Hall Kelly

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This was not what I was expecting at all.  I bought it ages ago and it’s been sitting on my Kindle for over a year.  I started it when I was travelling, I did not have the wifi turned on and so did not get the book summary when you open a book for the first time.  All I knew was this was set in WWII and featured three women from different walks of life, whose lives intersected somehow.  Based on the cover, they appear friends.  That’s not what happens at all. What I didn’t realise going in was that […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Based on the cover, you’d think this was about three friends. It’s really not, at all."

3/8/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:17 |

Their names written on water. Or scorched into the earth. Or atomized into the air. Legion.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

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CBR10Bingo: This Is The End (BINGO!) Have you ever read a book that you hated to put down but also hated to keep reading because you couldn’t bear the thought of reaching the end? That’s how I felt reading Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, the companion to her brilliant Life After Life.  Unlike Ursula in Life After Life, her younger brother Teddy only gets one shot at life. He still becomes a bomber pilot during World War II, still gets shot down over Germany, but this time he survives, captured and imprisoned for the last 18 months of the […]

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11/2/2018 's CBR10 Review No:60 |

If you wonder what the Irish were doing in World War II this might answer it….

Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II by Alan Gratz

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This is the Award Winner. The Dorothy Canfield Fisher award is a Vermont state award that the books are picked by adults (though I am not always sure why they were the pickers as one was a professor at my college who had no English or child background that I knew of) and then voted on by the kids. Of course, the year I did this award the “cool kids” pick won. But that is the perfect lead in to this book. It is 1943. Germany is winning the war. Mostly. Or at least that is what they say. Actions […]

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10/9/2018 's CBR10 Review No:375 |

I’ve been waiting for this moment for Cannonball my life, oh Lord

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

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CBR10Bingo: Backlog (Cannonball! and Bingo! Woohoo!) After reading a few Sherman Alexie books a few years ago, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony started popping up in my suggestions, and for some reason, I thought it was poetry rather than a novel. Once I read the description, I put it on my wishlist, where it languished for several months until I finally bought a copy last summer at The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles on a long lunch break from jury duty. I’ve pulled it off my bookshelf a few times when looking for my next read but never quite pulled […]

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9/8/2018 's CBR10 Review No:52 |

The Hell of War on the Home Front

Perfidia by James Ellroy

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Read as part of CBR10Bingo: Almost award winner. Perfidia was nominated for the 2015 Folio Prize but did not win. It speaks to the times we live in that the depth of my cynicism has allowed me to appreciate James Ellroy novels in a way I never could before this summer. This is the second book of his I’ve read the last few months and it’s one of the best things I read in 2018. It could also be that this one is slightly better than the others I’ve read. Whereas I usually can’t stand the crass dialogue and doctrinal amorality of […]

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9/6/2018 's CBR10 Review No:17 |


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