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:

“The Present Is Made Entirely of the Past”

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn

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I’m not a fan of memoirs, but I’m not sure why. They just feel claustrophobic, and what if you don’t like the person you’re stuck in the closet with? Which is really besides the point. A good memoir doesn’t mean the person has to be good or appealing. In fact, the opposite can be more riveting. Which relates to Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn and one of the subjects of this book. Flynn’s memoir is about him and his father. Flynn’s […]

If Agatha Christie Took Psychedelics

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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In the beginning, I fell passionately in love with Stuart Turton’s The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I can’t say much without ruining the book, but suffice to say it involves a trove of characters, a murder, and an ingenious set up. The main character is a kaleidoscope, and the characters that revolve around him similarly shift and change. As the characters race to find out who kills Evelyn Hardcastle, old histories and painful stories start to bubble to the surface. By the time […]

Character First

The Trespasser by Tana French

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Tana French’s The Trespasser is more than your standard police procedural. The story is told through police officer Antoinette Conway’s eyes, a furious, wary, excellent cop who has been treated badly by her sexist squad for a long time. Her partner Steve Moran is genial and sharp. He is the only one Antoinette seems to trust, which makes sense given how much she’s been sabotaged by the other cops. Antoinette and Steve catch a murder case that involves a young woman found dead in her […]

A Sweet Escape

The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker

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The Austen Playbook by Lucy Carter is the first romance I’ve picked up in ages. Years ago I was an avid Harlequin reader, a fact of which my friends made gentle fun. But I loved them. They were pure escapism, plus by that time they had transitioned from implication to full on doing it. Yay sex! My romances need to be physical as well as emotional. And luckily today’s romances fit the bill. I wouldn’t have picked up a romance without the enthusiastic reviews of my […]

An Anthology of Errors

Daggers Drawn by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

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Bingo – Reader’s Choice (replacing Sports Ball) My brother sometimes calls me Crankelina. In the privacy of my accepting family, I am known to occasionally exhibit pouty annoyance. And so it was with Daggers Drawn, a mystery anthology edited by Max Jakubowski. Some stories are riddled with typos. The mysteries are flaccid. Many characters are poorly sketched. I am a bit sorry I wasted my Reader’s Choice square on this unnotable collection. I could end the review there, I suppose, but I have a word […]

From Cranky to Charming

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

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CBR Bingo – Rec’d I picked up Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove after reading Leedock’s review and witcherwill’s suggestion in the comments. It took me awhile to warm up to the book and its main character. Ove is a widower who lives alone and has a metric ton of quirky habits. He is precise to the extreme. Everything has to be just so. He likes his lines clean and exact. He is excellent at building and repairing things. He gets infuriated by his neighbors ignoring […]



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