Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About esmemoria

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Eager to get back on the horse this year! In my walking around life, I miss my old, blind pug (the Ancient Mariner), help amazing college students become teachers, and tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: esmemoria's Quick Questions interview.)

esmemoria's Reviews:

Get Your Own Damn Coffee

Between the Dark and the Daylight by Ed Gorman, ed.

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When I was in my early 20’s, I was a secretary at a disreputable art school in San Francisco. I supported the Graphic, Advertising, and Computer Design departments. I moved between departments during the day and tried to look industrious. My favorite boss was the Graphic Design director. He had previously worked at a design school in Pasadena and felt he was too good for the place (spoiler: he was right). He was known to be difficult, and frequently was in a fit of pique. […]

Clever Mystery within a Mystery

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

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I can’t begin to describe how much I loved Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders. But this is a review, so, well, I will. Magpie Murders is a mystery within a mystery. It starts with an editor reading Alan Conway’s Magpie Murders, featuring Conway’s detective Atticus Pünd. The reader plunges into Conway’s story, which revolves around a handful of murders and features a large cast of suspects not unlike those found in Agatha Christie’s books. The mystery is absorbing and clever, with well-drawn characters, and I was […]

The Circumscription of Women and Men

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

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In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs. Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence is a compelling look at the mores of the upper class in 1800’s New York City and particularly how such mores dictate and limit lives, particularly women’s. The story follows upper class Newland Archer, who is torn between his demure and incurious fiancée and the independent and […]

What Else Would You Look With?

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

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Promising: Maybe every final girl in the history of final girls has had a horror chick whispering to her from just off-screen. Maybe this isn’t a deviation but the usual build. Just one nobody ever knows about until they’re smack-dab in the beating heart of it. What? Jade looks at him with just her eyes. Stephen Graham Jones’ My Heart is a Chainsaw is an uneven horror story that follows Jade, an alienated teenager who is obsessed with slasher films. Happenings in her town indicate […]

A Master of Color and Crime

Killer Come Back to Me by Ray Bradbury

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Ray Bradbury can do it all: science fiction, horror, crime, fantasy, mystery. One of his most famous books is Fahrenheit 451, but he’s written tons of short stories. The collection Killer Come Back to Me is a compilation of Bradbury’s crime stories. Bradbury’s way with language makes common things new again. From one story: “Mr. Willis tonked a laugh out like cleaning your pipe on a flat stone”; “Peter [he shouted], show him, but it was all underwater. Blood pounded around on big red boots.” […]

These Things are Like Potato Chips

Want to Know a Secret? by Freida McFadden

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I have a pile of books I want to read next to my bed (okay, on my bed, I tend to fall asleep with my books like they are so many teddy bears) but I keep buying McFadden’s books. Want to Know a Secret? is yet another quick read, but sadly it’s the weakest book by far. The book centers on a woman named April who has a YouTube cooking show and an unknown enemy who keeps sending her nasty text messages. Is it one […]



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