#cbr7

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Renaissance Betty Friedan

Finally!  A comedy I actually thought was funny (I’m looking at you, As You Like It)!  After many years of only teaching Shakespeare’s tragedies, I couldn’t face the prospect of teaching Julius Caesar one more time to sophomores.  Shakespeare is a bit of a tough sell alone, but Julius Caesar is just so dry.  It doesn’t go over well.  So I’ve been on a search for a good comedy to teach.  Much Ado is shocked me.  In a good way.

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Relentless Badness With Some Boats

When all your main characters are whiny and spoiled and unlikeable, making your multiple villains as awful and vile as possible for comparison does not make your protagonists look any better. “Look how EEEEEEVIL the pirate captain is! He kicks puppies and drowns kittens and doesn’t call his mother on Mother’s Day!!!!” “Yes, Robin, I see, but that doesn’t make Althea any more fun to read about.”

Read more of Bothari43′s review here.

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Ironically I received two copies of Dark Victory for Christmas this past December but didn't manage to read either copy until now. The (only) problem with receiving 18 books between December and my...

Remember when we all collectively got over Jude Law for having 6 films released in 2004? Well, between Bette Davis's film debut in 1931 and the end of her contract with Warner Brothers 11 years later she amassed 52 film credits! Thirty two of those were in the first five years of her career. Cannonballer Caitlin_D learned all about Bette when she read her biography, Dark Victory, by Ed Sikov.

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I didn't know too much about Martin Short before listening to the audio version of his autobiography, I Must Say. His time on SCTV and SNL came before I started watching those shows, and his late n...

If you want to check out Martin Short's autobiography, get the audio version, says badkittyuno. He and his wife were very close with Steve Martin and his wife, with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, with Nora Ephron and Nicholas Pileggi. They had crazy parties and pulled pranks on each other, and Short's impressions of other Hollywood stars is fantastic.

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There are only a handful of novels that have made me want to cry in order to purge myself of the myriad emotions upon reaching the conclusion. I'm not a crier. Unless it's weddings, graduations, ...

The Chancellor rates Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go up there with The Book Thief as a book that made him cry at the end. Shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, it's one of those books he'd take to a desert island and reread over and again. Have you read this one?

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All her life, Agnieszka has known two things: that she must stay away from the Wood at all costs, and that every ten years, the Dragon emerges from his tower to select a girl to serve him for the n...

HillaryM recommends Uprooted by Naomi Novik, which takes us inside a world based on Polish folklore, including the tale of Baba Yaga. It's a refreshing change from fantasy that's blatantly based on the British Isles (as much as we might love those myths too).

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So this is the week I thank all of you, my fellow Cannonballers, for having such fabulous taste in books. Without all of you, I definitely would not have found some of my favorite books of the year...

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson might have won the National Book Award, the Newbery medal and the NAACP Image Award, but it was its 5-star Cannonball Read review that turned Beth Ellen on to it. Check out her review, and maybe get your own CBR-based book recommendation.

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This is an exquisite debut novel with the mixed flavors of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, and even a taste of the powerful memoir Infidel by Ayaan ...

Cannonballer Valyruh calls The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther "...an exquisite debut novel with the mixed flavors of Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, and even a taste of the powerful memoir Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It is a story about culture clash, immigration, tradition, and love in all its many forms."