Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About ingres77

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I've been doing this since 2015, and though I'm not going to read a hundred books a year, I plan on doing this for the foreseeable future. I also maintain the Cannonball Read database, and make infrequent updates on our reading habits. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: ingres77's Quick Questions interview.)

ingres77's Reviews:

For you a thousand times over.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

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I want to write a review that is unwieldy with munificence, so great is my love of this novel. I’m almost 70 books into my year, and am already going to call The Kite Runner the best thing I’ll read in 2016. Set mostly in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion, this book follows the maturation of a Pashtun kid named Amir and his best friend Hassan, a Hazara boy. Amir’s mother died in childbirth, so he was raised by his father, who he affectionately calls […]

Disposable tin soldiers

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A child of the 80s, I grew up on a distorted view of Vietnam. Free love was a whispered aphorism that seemed almost impossible in the age of Ronald Reagan, televangelism, and HIV. Peace on earth, a barely remembered dream amidst the bluster of Cold War bravado and the cinematic blood lust of Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The 60s were dead. But in its place, like some perverse cosmic satirist with a zeitgeist-altering pen, was a hyper-visualized mirror image that exaggerated its […]

Plenty of explosions, but not as many sweeping camera angles.

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Bravely etched into the opening chapter of this book is the proclamation that the harrowing account of the attack in Benghazi will not include a rundown of the crimes, real or imagined, of the Obama administration. This is not a political book. And thank Christ for that. Don’t get me wrong, I love history, and I see politics as history experienced unclouded by the mists of time. I enjoy reading about political machinations, and try to view the world through various partisan lenses. But there […]

Like the war itself, I want to support it but find myself turning away from the lies and delusion

by 4 Comments

This is easily the most controversial book I’ve read for the Cannonball. First: about me. I was never in the military. But I was an army brat, and have spent most of my life around military or ex-military. While I am under no illusions about my qualifications to speak on war, I do think I understand the kind of person Chris Kyle was (in the most general sense). I’ve known people like him (in temperament if not experience) my whole life. And, frankly, I don’t […]

If your second best series is better than everyone else’s first, you’re doing something right.

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JK Rowling’s writing has improved noticeably from the first Harry Potter books. I haven’t read The Casual Vacancy yet, both because the story doesn’t appeal to me and it’s received a generally lukewarm reception, so it came as a bit of a shock to see her writing about sex and characters who use foul language. It’s almost like hearing my mother use those words. But, once you get passed that (assuming that, like me, that’s something you even have to get passed), this is a […]

July stat round-up!

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Okay, I did a good job this month keeping up to date with the Goodreads information on all the reviews. I’ve added the nation of origin for the authors, and will be including the original language in which the book was written going forward. July stats: 298 reviews Average rating: 3.62 stars Most popular book: Dietland by Sarai Walker and The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (3 reviews each) Most popular author: Kristen Ashley (15 reviews) Most reviews: badkittyuno (unsurprisingly; 28 reviews) Fiction: […]



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