Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Halbs

CBR 7
CBR 8
CBR 9
CBR10 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR17 Levels

I'm left-handed! (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Halbs's Quick Questions interview.)

Halbs's Reviews:

A Beach Read on the Beach

Camino Island by John Grisham

by Leave a Comment

The wildest thing about this John Grisham book is that it’s not about lawyers. Our man John instead focuses on writers, books, heists, and French furntiure. It’s a welcome and pleasant departure for the reader as much as I’m sure it is for Grisham. It’s a fun little novel that would probably make a nice little Netflix limited run series. Or Paramount+, mayhaps. If you like fun but relaxing beach reads with a little bit of danger and sexiness – here you go.   Mercer […]

Do the Hustle

Charming as a Verb by Ben Philippe

by Leave a Comment

When I started this book I wasn’t sure how long I would continue reading. A teenage guy with a lot of swagger talking about “the hustle” and “the hunger” for making it – not really what I’m into. However, Ben Philippe’s charming novel and character are not what they seem on the surface – that’s the whole point of this enjoyable read. Charming as a Verb is about first-generation Haitian-American Henry Haltiwanger. He lives on the Upper West side of NYC where his dad is […]

A satisfying end to a great sci-fi trilogy

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

by Leave a Comment

Reviewing books in the middle of a series is always tricky because, by definition, spoilers are inherent. The fact that the the cover of this book says it’s a sequel to Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades already gives away certain information about the plot, let alone the back cover summary. All that aside, I will try to just give the bare bones of this plot along with this statement of the trilogy – it’s a fun, entertaining, and satisfying series. Now, to The […]

Bond…Anachronism Bond

Ian Fleming's James Bond in VARGR by Warren Ellis, Jason Masters

by Leave a Comment

My local library allows us to roam the shelves in thirty-minute increments, in limited numbers. It was recently my turn. For the first time in over a year I was able to take my time browsing the graphic novel collections (we have one in the general fiction section and one for teens). To my surprise, the library had acquired several new-to-me  selections. The first one I grade was James Bond in VARGR. I’m a Bond fan and also a fan of spy comics; some of […]

“By the smallest of actions one can restore some order in the world.”

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

by 2 Comments

This was an audiobook listen for me, narrated by the wonderful Nicholas Guy Smith. It was also something of a journey. It took me most of 2020 and a month of 2021 to finish this fine novel. It took me so long not because it was a chore to listen, but precisely because it was  a great story. It takes time to make sense of those. It was a great read for last year because of both plot and theme. The plot’s connection to 2020 […]

A long time ago we used to be friends…

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

by 5 Comments

I’m not sneaking up on anybody by reading and reviewing Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. It was definitely one of the most talked-about books of 2020, it’s going to be a series, and it even made Goodreads’ Best of YA fiction finalist list. Even with all of the accolades it was one I missed – you just can’t get to everything, after all. Luckily for me, my wife short-listed this as one of my must-reads for 2021. (I’ve got five or six […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo