Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Chris

CBR11 participant

Hi, it's me. Really, I hate these bio things. I like to read.

Chris's Reviews:

To Believe or Not to Believe

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

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Set as a monologue given by Changez to a man he meets in Lahore – a man who may or may not be a spy – The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a book that not only examines a Pakistani man who is in America during 9-11 but also the question of the reliable or unreliable narrator. Changez’s story details his, perhaps, buying into the American dream or idea, his love for a typical, cliched American beauty, and his reaction to the terrorist attack 9-11. The question […]

Once upon a time in the USSR

The Girl from the Metropol Hotel by Ludmilla Petrushevskya

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Well, this does explain some of those wonderful stories that Petrushevskaya writes. Petrushevskaya’s memoir is about her early years – her family’s fall from grace, her birth, her life during war time. She lived as a half feral child for several years. But like in her stories, her use of language is beautiful and her comments on life searing. “We ate glue in secret because of the rumor that it was flavored with real cherries” (22) she writes describing how scare food was, especially for […]

I Blame TV

The Cadaver King and Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington

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You will never look at science the same way after reading this book. Even if you know that the shows like C.S.I. are science fairy tales what Balko and Carrington chronicle isn’t so much a miscarriage of justice but a deliberate hoodwinking by a group of men (the two in the title are the most important but hardly the only ones) who didn’t give a damn about the truth because those accused were poor, or black or the forgotten or all three. The book focuses […]

More time with McLevy

Shadow of the Serpent by David Ashton

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This Mclevy mystery occurs prior to the end of the BBC audio series. It is also more closely linked to Victorian politics than some of the other mysteries. While the focus is on Mclevy, and we get more of his backstory, which is a little different than you think. In many ways, Mclevy was made to saunter Leith. The other supporting characters from the series also make appearances, so of course we have the gossip of Jean Brash and Mclevy over coffee scenes. The bit […]

Jean Brash is my spirit animal

Mistress of the Just Land by David Ashton

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One of the reasons that I loved the Mclevy series on the BBC radio was Siobhan Redmond’s portrayal of Jean Brash, mistress of the best bawdy house in Edinburgh (actually most likely the world). This book, written by the BBC series’ creator/writer David Ashton, takes place before the close of the series and focuses mainly on Jean Brash solving a crime that occurred in her business. She is not happy about this. Hannah Semple, of course, is Watson to Brash’s Sherlock. Mclevy and Mulholland make […]

Best Story about Lovers EVER!

Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories by Ray Russell

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I hadn’t heard of Russell until I saw this Penguin edition somewhere. I love castles with ghosts in them, or at least I love reading about them and visiting them in the daylight. Not sure, if I would like to spend a night in one. So of course, I had to get it and eventually read it. The fact that Russell worked for Playboy does show in a few of the stories – one or two stories have a link with sex and violence. The […]



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