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September 2019

MsWas's Message Corner

Greetings Cannonballers,

Hope everyone's surviving through back to school and end of summer goings on. We've got #CannonBookClub at the end of this week - did you read a Sherlock Holmes adaptation? I shared a great adaptation last month, but if you're looking for a short but weird adaptation, check out the short story parody by John Lennon (yes, the Beatle), "The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield", available online at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia. Lennon read a bunch of Holmes stories over a few weeks in Tahiti and then came up with the parody. You can catch him speaking about it briefly in this clip from a 1968 BBC interview.

I'm also working on a new look for the website for next year, so if you have any suggestions or comments on the current site, drop me a line!

Take care and Happy Reading!
Mswas



Q&A with a Cannonballer: Fiat.Luxury

When you're feeling stressed or sad, what author, series, or genre helps you feel better? Why? 

This is hard -- I think just reading in general makes me feel better. If I had to choose, I'd say sci-fi, something that gets off this planet and far away from whatever my current situation is. I come back to reality feeling a little removed and refreshed, with a better perspective. In my last funk, I read The Freeze Frame Revolution, and it was a great tonic for my ills.

 

See what else Fiat.Luxury has to say »


 

CBR Bingo

 

The Bingoers are almost to 500 reviews already! You guys are amazing. Be sure to tag your posts with cbr11bingo (no quotes, no hashtags, no spaces) to make sure you get the credit, and check the September check-in post to make sure your numbers match. You can always email or jump into the comments on a recap post if you have questions.


#CannonBookClub

 

The A Study in Scarlet #CannonBookClub was a lot of fun, and the Remix #CannonBookClub is shaping up to be a hoot as well. Read any adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story, then join us this Friday and Saturday, September 20-21. Discussion topics and questions are up, so you can start your pondering early!
 

 

National Library Card Sign-up Month

 
 
Happy National Library Card Sign-up Month! Since 99.9% of Cannonballers likely already have a library card (or two or three), take this month to peer pressure your friends, neighbors, co-workers, children, and relatives to patronize their local library! Remember, libraries can be so much more than books (although that's the best part). I recently learned that my local library lets you check out passes to national parks! 
 
 


Banned Books Week

Celebrate your freedom to read during Banned Books Week (and all the time, really!) September 22-28. You can read one of 2018's 10 most challenged books, or go retro like Tennessee and read a wholesome classic like Harry Potter. Perfect Bingo fodder!

 
 

Pajiban Authors
 

The Pajiba writers aren’t the only writers in these parts. Debcapsfan enjoyed fellow Pajiban, Peter Vonder Haar’s debut novel, Lucky Town. A brother and sister P.I. team investigate their brother’s disappearance. It's listed as his first novel and the first in a series, so we can continue to support Peter for many moons. Congratulations, Peter! 
 
 

Uncategorized option getting demoted

 


Small update to the review process: if you don't select one of the categories, it will now default to Fiction rather than Uncategorized. This will help clean up our more than 1,000 uncategorized reviews, and hopefully make searching easier for those looking for something specific. You can always go back in and edit a category, if it shouldn't be listed as Uncategorized, or Fiction. And always remember to tag, categorize, and rate your reviews! 
 
   

Pinterest
 

Did you know we're on Pinterest now? We're at pinterest.com/cannonballread with Library Love, Book Club, Reading and CBR Review Boards and more. If you're interested in helping out the CBR volunteers as we pin our heart on our sleeves, please contact Mswas.
 
 

Donation


It's time for another donation to the American Cancer Society. Thanks for all your clicks, donations, and good vibes. We have now raised $325 to kick cancer's butt in 2019!

Stuff We're Reading

A different idea on [redacted for spoiler]: lowercasesee's review of Recursion

Sep 16, 2019 10:32 am
I didn’t have terribly high hopes going into this one. The summary immediately namedrops his previous book, Dark Matter, which I read and came away from utterly bored but the things we do for CBR Bingo, yeah? So consider me pleasantly surprised here! It even feels like a genuinely new take on [redacted for spoiler]. Sorry, I’m censoring myself. I went back to that same summary and realized they don’t actually give away the matter at the heart of this book so you know, I won’t either. Once it clicks it’s kind of awesome. It also weirdly relates back to part […]
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Non-Fiction Roundup: badkittyuno's review of Life Among the Savages (Jacksons #1), #IMomSoHard, Where Am I Now?, Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life, Raising Demons

Sep 16, 2019 10:01 am
Now that I’m done with Bingo, I am determined not to let myself get behind on reviews again. I expect this determination to last AT LEAST 3 days, til I leave town for two trips over two weeks, finish 15 books and fall into a black hole again. But first! Some non-fiction reviews. (5 stars) Life Among the Savages (Jacksons #1) by Shirley Jackson Other than a few references (like lighting up cigarette on the way to deliver her third child!), Jackson could have written this collection of stories about her family in the last year, rather than 1953. It’s […]
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share on Twitter Like Non-Fiction Roundup: badkittyuno's review of Life Among the Savages (Jacksons #1), #IMomSoHard, Where Am I Now?, Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life, Raising Demons on Facebook

She’d only kill when it came easy.: vel veeter's review of Battle Royale

Sep 16, 2019 09:02 am
This is the long (long long) novel that is the basis of the more well-known film by the same name. A group of middle-schoolers presumably on a class trip by bus as fed sleeping gas and wake up in an unfamiliar classroom being told that they have been chosen for the project (and are among dozens of other classes in the same situation) and will be sent out onto an abandoned island with one weapon with the idea that the last surviving class member will be allowed to live. There are electronic collars around their necks that will explode if […]
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He was afraid of offending her because he was suddenly afraid of everything.: vel veeter's review of The Farewell Waltz

Sep 16, 2019 08:57 am
An earlyish novel by Milan Kundera, this story takes place in a spa town over the course of several days. We meet Rusenka, a nurse at the spa who has recently realized she is pregnant, and Klima, a trumpeter who has gotten Rusenka pregnant, and spends the bulk of the novel trying to get out of getting her pregnant. This novel, like a lot of Milan Kundera novels, also involves a host of ancillary characters whose own problems interweave what I would consider to be the main narrative of Rusenka and Klima. The book is relatively short, and like most […]
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share on Twitter Like He was afraid of offending her because he was suddenly afraid of everything.: vel veeter's review of The Farewell Waltz on Facebook

The god who controls time has seen fit to play fool with me.: vel veeter's review of The Industry of Souls

Sep 16, 2019 08:51 am
This book is from 1998 and it was nominated for the Booker Prize. In it, we meet a former British citizen, now more or less repatriated as a Soviet/Russian citizen. We find him at the opening of the novel turning 80 and his much younger Russian wife is fondly preparing him for the small celebration of his life. From here we are taken back some fifty or so year to his arrest at the hands of the KGB in Leipzig as a suspected spy, to a foregone conclusion of a trial, and his imprisonment in a Siberia gulag for 25 […]
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share on Twitter Like The god who controls time has seen fit to play fool with me.: vel veeter's review of The Industry of Souls on Facebook

My unpopular take on a classic: ElCicco's review of Little Women

Sep 16, 2019 07:58 am
cbr11bingo Classic When I was about 10, I tried to read Little Women but found it so boring and such a slog that I gave up. Fast-forward several decades and I hate to say it, but I still kind of feel the same way. The “coming of age” story about the March sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy has important things to say about family, poverty and faith, as well as about the way young ladies ought to behave and what they should strive for. It was a hit from the moment it was published and has remained so ever […]
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Amanda Howard (aka "Bothari43")

The Cannonball Read Newsletter Editor
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