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:

“I’m not living with you. We occupy the same cage.”

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

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Bingo: Play I have always loved Tennessee Williams, and his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof did not diminish that love. A somewhat short play in three acts, the story revolves around a Southern family marked by repression, thwarted love, and the ties that bind. The play opens in the bedroom of Brick and Maggie, a couple in a sexless marriage. Brick is a member of the wealthy Southern family that owns the house. He is an alcoholic who represses his feelings and communication […]

Middling Mystery Collection

The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024 by Ed. Anthony Horowitz

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Bingo: “B” I eagerly picked up this anthology of the best mystery stories of 2024 as it was edited by Anthony Horowitz, one of my new favorite mystery authors. On a scale of 1 to 5 I gave stories an average of 3.3. Because I found the collection pretty mediocre overall, I am giving it two stars. Only two stories out of 20 earned a perfect five, one of them a tale of a staged suicide by L. Frank Baum of all people. There were […]

Life Under the Third Reich

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany by Eric Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband

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Bingo: Citizen. “[T]he questions we asked of Jews about their everyday lives in Nazi Germany concentrated more on how they got along with and were treated by the non-Jewish population in their communities and on their loss of identity as former patriotic Germans in a society that no longer considered them worthy of citizenship and eventually of life itself.” I picked up Eric Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband’s What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany because of the growing fascism in […]

Frothy Mystery

No Wind of Blame by Georgette Hyer

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Bingo: Review Elderberry’s review of Georgette Heyer’s Duplicate Death inspired me to pick up one of Heyer’s mysteries to check her writing out for myself. Overall, I enjoyed this light mystery full to the brim with characters. In No Wind of Blame, Wally, the second husband of wealthy and over dramatic Ermyntrude, is shot to death and everyone is a suspect. There is Ermyntrude’s daughter Vicky, who is a precocious “caution,” as one character puts it. There is Mary who is Wally’s cousin and heir […]

The Strengths of Human Management

Causing Others to Want Your Leadership by Robert DeBruyn

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Bingo: School. This book discusses leadership for school administrators. My father was a teacher for about 20 years, before he moved into school administration. He received a second administration Masters at Bankstreet College and the book Causing Others to Want Your Leadership was one of his texts. The book is quite old: it was first published in 1976. There isn’t a single rating for it on Good Reads (though it will get mine soon enough). But the book has remarkably modern guidance and is a […]

Tales of a Profiler

Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes

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Bingo: Work. This book covers the work of a long-time criminalist. CW: Sexual assault and murder I expected more from Paul Holes’s Unmasked. I used to read a lot more true crime in the past, but this book recently caught my eye. I expected a wide variety of case studies, but was disappointed to find mostly one case was discussed, the Golden State Killer. Holes spends some time discussing his personality and his inability to express emotions in his two marriages and to his kids. […]



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