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:

Bringing Life to the Story

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman

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I’m not usually one to knock people’s tastes in problematic art. Chinatown is my all-time favorite movie and I’d be hard pressed to never watch it again. So it’s tough for me to judge. Which doesn’t mean that automatically immunizes me from criticism. I may be a “You do you” person but I also believe we should be critiquing our tastes at all time and remember that many of them come at a cost. I read Lolita when I was an 18-year old college freshman. I’d like to say […]

Melania In Paris

Our American Friend by Anna Pitoniak

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There’s been a trend these last few years of taking popular female historical characters and putting them in espionage situations. Queen Elizabeth. Jackie O. I’ve never read any of these books but I suppose there’s something to be mined from the genre. There’s really no interesting way to do the same with Melania Trump, given her complicity in her husband’s regime. So Anna Pitoniak decides to tweak just a few things (very few things) and write a story that covers both ends of the Cold War, […]

The Book I Needed Right Now

The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran

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I really needed this book right now. I tried for almost a decade to get into the Claire DeWitt series. I thought the idea of a transgressive detective traipsing around the country solving crimes while spitting wry dialogue would be fun. But I felt like Sara Gran laced her books with too many acerbic observations and dead end philosophies; which inevitably messed with the flow of the book. But as Stevie Nicks would say: Time makes bolder children grow older. My 20s became my 30s. Stuff happened. […]

Hear the 20s Roar

Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age by Debby Applegate

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This is another book where you really have to be deeply invested in the subject matter to enjoy it. Fortunately, it’s right up my alley. 20s, bootlegging, gangsters, New York City. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It seems as if there was one running thread that connected gangsters like Arnold Rothstein to politicians like Jimmy Walker to entertainers like the Marx brothers to athletes like Jack Dempsey to the upper crust of Manhattan society, it was sex. Specifically the sex Polly Adler provided in her […]

Embrace Tradition

The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton

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This is one I probably should sit on the way I usually do with reviews, as I probably wouldn’t be as rapturous in description if I sat down and examined all the holes in this book (and it has plenty). But man, that ending. Those of you who have read my posts and commented before know my thing with endings: I usually hate them because they’re so predictable and inevitably disappointing. And the ones that shock usually do so gratuitously. I appreciate an ending where […]

Connection is Made

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

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In an ideal world, this would be the first of a 10-book series. There’s certainly room here for at least one sequel and more. Which doesn’t mean Jane Pek needs to do this. Series eventually run out of steam as one can only recycle the same characters and plots for so long. But I really loved this writer’s style, her protagonist, and the way she uses New York City. But it’s not just that this was written by a city-dwelling millennial who loves mysteries (as Jane Pek […]



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