Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Jake

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I love reading! (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Jake's Quick Questions interview.)

Jake's Reviews:

Better on a Re-Read

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin

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A year ago, I binge read the first three books in the Earthsea Cycle. A Wizard of Earthsea came in a three-way tie for my favorite read of 2018. Tombs of Atuan was my least favorite of the three. I felt like it was too fascinated with the labyrinthian tombs and the ending took too much of the lead character’s agency that she had built. Anyway, I decided to go back to the Cycle and read Tehanu, which is book four. When I discovered it would include the lead from […]

Whew

2666 by Roberto Bolano

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This isn’t going to be a conventional review because I don’t know what to say about 2666 or really make of it. I know it’s an excellent novel; it felt like Bolaño was writing through me rather than to me. But to summarize it the way I normally do (plot, good points, bad points, summation) won’t do it justice. So this is going to be a grab bag of thoughts about a stirring, complex, difficult, beautiful, exhausting, breathtaking book. -The five story lines connected in a way […]

Slumpbuster

Sunset Express by Elvis Cole

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When baseball players are in a slump, there’s an old school remedy for doing something on the side to help break out of it. It’s called finding a “slumpbuster.” I’m not going to talk about what it actually is since it’s rooted in horrific misogyny (and I suggest you don’t google it either) but I’m going to take the germ of an idea (minus the misogyny) and apply it to reading. Finishing books has been a chore lately and I was disheartened at how much […]

Auf Wiedersehen, Old Friend

Metropolis by Philip Kerr

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The last week or so, I’ve written in different outlets about the impact Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series has had on my reading journey and personal life. While acknowledging the many faults of these books, I love them in a special way. I think Kerr is great at capturing atmosphere and cynicism to produce some truly great crime reading. “Nazi Noir” is a burgeoning genre now but Kerr’s Gunther works were really the trendsetter. Knowing this would be the last one following Kerr’s untimely death, […]

Eat the Rich

Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö

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Going into reading this series, I knew Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were avowed socialists who wrote these books in large parts as a critique of inequality in Sweden. But while their beliefs do sneak out from time-to-time, they generally ground their mysteries in the tradition of a police procedural as opposed to pedagogy cloaked in mystery drag. That goes out the window with Murder at the Savoy, which is about as didactic of a book as I’ve read from them. There’s no question about it […]

My Kind of Town, Chicago is…

In A Pig's Eye by Robert Campbell

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In a time before both Amazon and GoodReads reviews became omnipresent, a person would pick something off the shelf because it interested them. They didn’t cross consult a third party to see if it would be worth their time, they just grabbed it and hoped for the best. I confess that I sometimes miss living in the stone age. I took a chance on this one after seeing it for $3 in the discount section at my favorite bookstore: The Mysterious in lower Manhattan. Rarely […]



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