Cannonball Read 9

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

NightinFail

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

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Spoilers in this review. This book made me tired. I confess, I do not get what everyone sees in The Nightingale. I feel like because it is set in WWII/the Holocaust, and we know that terrible things happened, this book had ALL OF THE TERRIBLE THINGS and we just accept that EVERY TERRIBLE THING happened to the characters because, of course, it was a time of terrible things. But it was too much; it was simply not believable to me after a point. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The protagonists are Isabelle and Vianne, two French sisters. These two […]

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6/23/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:48 |

“We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.”

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows (full cast audio)

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I have had this book on my to read list since CBR5 in 2013. This year I decided as part of my overall Cannonball goal of 78 books, that I was also going to work my way through my audiobook and owned book backlog. A little. With that goal in mind I set up a monthly goal list, with a book or two I already own, a book or two I have in audio form in Audible, and then I pick a couple more to take out from the library. In making up April’s goals, I came across The Guernsey […]

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5/19/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:30 |

A WWII story you never hear about

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

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Between Shades of Gray is a World War Two story that is not often told. It is the story of the Soviet Union’s occupation of  Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. The Soviets captured those who they saw as anti-Soviet, mainly the educated- doctors, lawyers, teachers, military servicemen, writers, business owners, musicians, artists, and librarians. These people were rounded up and murdered, sent to prison, or sold into slavery in Serbia. We follow the story of Lina, who is separated from her father, but is with her mother and younger brother. They spend weeks on a train with others, and they are […]

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4/16/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:27 |

Next time, more history less theory, please

Blackout, All Clear by Connie Willis

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Funny story: a number of years ago I read Blackout by Connie Willis, one of my favorite authors. I really love Connie Willis, even though there have been some disappointments (Remake is way too obvious and Promised Land. . .I don’t even want to talk about it). But when she’s on, I’m nuts for her writing. Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which are curiously tied together by a time-travel theme and some shared characters, are two of my favorite contemporary novels, in spite of them being very different in tone. So I was kind of pissed off by Blackout the first time I […]

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4/9/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:8 |

Jam Packed, Still Boring

In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen

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I believe this book was one of the free kindle books that Amazon Prime members have access to. I have quite a few of them stacked up in my electronic TBR pile and this was the first one I dove into. I’m… not impressed. Maybe there’s a reason it was free? I hope the others are better than this one. This book is aggressively mediocre. It is so middle of the road that it refuses to go places that might take it somewhere interesting. The villains are exactly who you think they are, the characters do exactly what you’d expect […]

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3/29/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:25 |

Sid is a Jerk

Half-Blook Blues by Esi Edugyan

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As a person of mixed race (White mother, Black father) who loves the blues, I thought that a book like Half-Blood Blues (featuring several mixed race characters and blues) would be right up my alley.  It was not.  In fact, it took me nearly a week to read the first 50 pages and I was bored to death almost the whole time.  On page 54 things finally (finally!) got interesting from a story standpoint, but I still had to contend with the writing, which never took off for me.  This is in part because I struggle with reading dialogue written […]

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2/24/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:6 |

“You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

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There is a complex tapestry of finely woven threads that make up this story; each one reaching back into antiquity, becoming drab of color and less distinct. The tapestry details the modern world, and without these threads, it’s impossible to understand the context in which we live. This book is an attempt to explain this tapestry, and details its creation via the economic systems of Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States. It follows their development in the 19th century, through WWI and it’s tumultuous aftermath and through the implosion of the Great Depression and rebirth following WWII. Which […]

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2/24/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:10 |

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

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This story is from the perspective of Bruno, a nine year old boy living in Berlin, Germany. In the beginning, Bruno moves with his family from Berlin to a place that he calls “Out-with.” Throughout, you see his confusion about what’s going on around him. Why did his family have to move? Bruno wants to go back to Berlin where his friends are, and where his grandparents are. Looking out his bedroom window, he sees in the distance a fence, and beyond that fence, he sees people wearing what he describes as stripped pajamas. Eventually, Bruno realizes that this is not […]

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1/15/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:6 |

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