Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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

Halbs's Reviews:

“The ventricles / are unremarkable.”

Fixer by Edgar Kunz

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Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. The cover of Fixer, Edgar Kunz’ second collection of published poems, features a worn lighter. It is obvious the lighter has been used frequently over a long period of time.  The metal is tarnished; the image of a ship sailing on waves is worn. The old Zippo implies the story of a real life lived. That’s the book. The collection is called Fixer, and everything hinges on the poem “Fixer,” a recounting of three brothers managing […]

Doomsday Do’s and Doomsday Don’ts

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

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Carl is a normal dude. Except that he is stuck in the apocalypse. With his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut. And there is an alien invasion. Plus, Carl and most of what’s left of humanity are involuntarily placed on a Running-Man-style intergalactic game show. And the contestants don’t know who (if anyone) to trust. And the odds are that they will all die very soon. To stave off the inevitable, the characters have to kill monsters (Are they monsters?) and level up. Is it worth it […]

Hot Blood on Cold Ground

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita

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Iris Yamashita’s City Under One Roof is the first book in the newish Cara Kennedy mystery series. Kennedy is an Alaskan peace officer, drifting through Alaska. She is drawn to the tiny town of Point Mettier when a local teen finds a severed hand and local law enforcement is stumped. Or, they claim to be. It’s off-season, and everyone in Point Mettier lives in the same building. So, whose hand is it? Someone in the building has to know. Kennedy quickly becomes stuck in town, […]

“Here is the last stop for all those who come from somewhere else.”

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion

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Joan Didion and Bob Dylan are two peas in a pod – insightful, elusive, bug-eyed sunglass’d. I enjoy reading/listening to both of them, if for nothing else than to see what it’s like for an artist to be at the top of their game. I think Didion is at the top of her game when writing about California, and when writing about her family. Sometimes she writes about both. While Didion generally strikes me as someone who presents “Joan Didion” to the world, her tenderness […]

Not “believe” but “acknowledge.”

The Paranormal Ranger: A Navajo Investigator’s Search for the Unexplained by Stanley Milford, Jr.

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Stanley Milford, Jr., a retired law enforcement officer, is the perfect guy to write a book like The Paranormal Ranger. Rather than coming across as a showman or a snake oil salesman, Milford is unassuming, compassionate, logical, humble, multicultural. Perhaps most importantly, he is credible. That makes The Paranormal Ranger worth reading for anyone interested in things that happen on the borders of the explainable. Milford is the son of a mother raised Baptist and a father raised more in First Nations traditions. Therefore, Milford […]

“To click, to tumble, to descend.”

Breathing Machines: A Memoir of Computers by Leigh Alexander

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My first memory of a computer is that my backyard neighbor had one. Jason was my age, and his parents were both attorneys. They had both a sailboat and a computer, and in my mind those items were of the same status. Who has a COMPUTER? My second memory of a computer is getting an NES, a Nintendo Entertainment System. My dad was the one who hooked it up to the back of our tv, and he was really the one who understood how to play […]



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