Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Jake

CBR10 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR14 Bingo Badges
CBR15 Participant
CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR17 Levels

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

Jake's Reviews:

Horror Month 2023: #1

Dark Hollow by John Connolly

by Leave a Comment

For October 2023, I’m going to read as many horror- and/or Halloween-themed books as I can. It’s my own personal reading challenge to clear some stuff off my shelf and engage with other stuff on my TBR list. A few years ago, there was the framework of a tweet that made the rounds saying Men will literally do X instead of go to therapy. “X” could be watching football or training for UFC or any other such thing. The roots of it were legit: men are conditioned […]

September 2023 Leftovers

Ex Machina, Book Five by Brian K. Vaughan

Windfall by Wendy Corsi Staub

The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins

The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri

Guts and Genius: The Story of Three Unlikely Coaches Who Came to Dominate the NFL in the '80s by Bob Glauber

by Leave a Comment

Let’s please do something about climate change before it’s too late. I miss fall. And far more importantly: people’s lives are at stake. Ex Machina Book Five **** Mixed feelings on how this series ended. I think in many respects, the superhero stuff was handled better than the political angle through most of its run. That’s not something I thought I’d be saying after the first book. Making Mayor Hundred a contrarian centrist type was uninspired back then and comes off as even more annoying […]

Doors Should Stay Closed

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

by Leave a Comment

This book messed with me in a real way. It left me feeling very sad. Impossible to say how without revealing the ending. But the whole book is…well it’s something. A woman whose trauma-informed behavior makes her not understand societal norms. The reader starts with that and slowly unpacks everything. Everything. I’m usually nervous when writers try to write neurodiverse characters. I liked Motherless Brooklyn the second time around but am not a huge fan of how Lethem wrote Lionel Essrog. I’ve never been able to get […]

And What Comes After Bans?

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

by Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR15bingo: gender and banned. Maia Kobabe is a non-binary writer whose book Gender Queer has been banned at many schools and libraries across the country.  It almost made perfect sense that when I saw I had to read a banned book on gender for this challenge, I’d get to Maia Kobabe’s work. Maia’s book seems to have been the spark that ignited the fires of book banning in Florida. I will not argue that most Americans have a complex understanding of gender. […]

The Road to Hell

Hitler: 1889-1936, Hubris by Ian Kershaw

by Leave a Comment

Read this as part of CBR15Bingo: Europe. Adolf Hitler’s entire life story takes place in Europe and he, more than any one person, instigated a world war that began in Europe. Many times, Europe is considered a fancy, civilized place and I think we need to own how historically, western Europe has given the world a horrifying amount of barbarism between colonization, the transatlantic slave trade, and the Holocaust.  While far from an expert on Nazi Germany, I perhaps know more about it than the typical […]

Beauty Queen

The Enchanters by James Ellroy

by Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR15Bingo: hold steady. James Ellroy is a favorite author of mine; I return to his work often. This is the second in his Freddy Otash series. And it features a “protagonist” in a lot of trouble.  I only found out less than a month ago that James Ellroy was coming out with a new book. I keep my ear close to the ground as far as Ellroy is concerned so I’m not sure why the delayed announcement here. But I put […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo