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:

Medieval Armageddon

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

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This was…not the book I was expecting. I figured it would just be three people questing their way through medieval horror episodes. And it is that. The thing is: the horror is taking place during the bubonic plague, which has also apparently opened a portal to hell freeing the demons to do cosmic battle with the angels…hence the horrors on earth. Yeah this book is a lot. And it’s really good. The three main characters are cyphers for the larger story Christopher Buehlman is trying […]

The Other Side of the Sun

The Last Yakuza: Life and Death in the Japanese Underworld by Jake Adelstein

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The first time Martin Scorsese called Henry Hill after reading Hill’s gangster memoir Wiseguy, he told Hill: I’ve been waiting for this book for ten years. To which Hill replied: I’ve been waiting for this call for ten years. Scorsese had wanted to tell a tale of mobsters that didn’t revolve around Vito Corleone-esque bosses and power players. He wanted the audience to know about the gangster-next-door, the types he grew up with around Manhattan’s Little Italy. He found the story he was looking for in Hill’s […]

Thick As Blood

Judas: How A Sister's Testimony Brought Down A Criminal Mastermind by Astrid Holleeder

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I try hard not to pander as a well-intentioned guy but, man, men suck. Not trying to impress anyone with this very obvious comment. It’s a world created by and dominated by men. I don’t say this to invisibilize the very real gains and sacrifices women and non-cis-men have made in this world. But so often, the worst crimes in humanity originate from the minds and hands of men. I say this because Astrid Holleeder’s very raw memoir about testifying against her brother is not […]

The Made

Blanche On The Lam by Barbara Neely

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There’s a sort of condescension glommed onto the (mostly white) marketers of Black creatives which holds that some sort of fictional media by them with themes of racial prejudice blocking the hero’s path makes it the next Get Out. Get Out‘s a great movie that deserves its laudations but Black writers have been using genres to address the racism they feel for a long time. Barbara Neely does that here. Strip it of its context and it’s a cozy mystery: a maid solving a small […]

Scudder Re-Read #1: The Sins of the Fathers

The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

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For the next fourteen or so months (save February and March), I’m going to do a Matthew Scudder re-read. I love these books and I’ve been aching to revisit them. If I’m fortunate to live for a few years, I may do this with favored series. It’s good to revisit them, not as much too see what you missed the first time but to gain a deeper perspective of what drew you to them in the first place. The Sins of the Fathers is not the […]

Sigh…Vampires

No Dominion by Charlie Huston

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On Goodreads, there is a reviewer named Kemper (an alias). He has since retired, which is a shame because I love his reviews. He enjoys a lot of the same crime fiction I do. Anyway, Kemper had this tic I once found annoying in that he would write reviews by doing faux interviews with the authors of the books he read. He usually did this when he read something that wasn’t so good. I preferred reading his regular reviews. However, as I’ve written so many […]



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