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.)

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Extra Reading

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

Players by Don DeLillo

A Stained White Radiance by James Lee Burke

Louise Hathcock: Queen of the State Line Mob by Robert Broughton

Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark

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I’m trying to document all of the books I read on here to better hit my cannonball numbers. These are ones I’ve been meaning to upload into combined reviews but haven’t. Some are good, some are eh, but most of them just didn’t merit a lot of words from me at the time I finished them for various reasons. Who Is Maud Dixon? *** For a similar identity-based thriller I read last year, a reviewer derisively pegged it as The Talented Mr. Rip-off. I didn’t […]

Conspiracy of Fools

Wedding Station by David Downing

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I don’t know what to make of David Downing’s Station series. On the one hand, I frequently read historical fiction that explores the pitfalls of life in Nazi Germany. Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series is the best example but there are others in the popular “Nazi Noir” subgenere and Downing’s series is one of them. Downing gets the atmosphere of prewar Berlin down in an effective, readable way. I visited Berlin before and while it’s far removed from its Nazi past, the environment of low […]

The Banks Are Bad

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction by David Enrich

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You know the eye pop emoji that people share when they read something incredible? I feel like you could have laid that one out on just about every ten pages in this book. My word. I didn’t know much about Deutsche Bank before Donald Trump, mostly because they don’t have a presence for American peons like me. Even after, I only had the stomach to learn so much. I assumed they did shady stuff to help Trump get away with shady stuff, etc. There’s that […]

When the Friday Night Lights Go Out

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurty

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But my God, how Larry McMurty can write. Lonesome Dove, while certainly problematic in spots, is such an excellent book. I think I had it as my best read of 2015 or 2016. It was so good, it made me never want to read another McMurty again. How could he possibly top it? Well he may not have topped it, per se, he certainly showed he’s an all around excellent writer, one whose catalog I need to tear through asap. In many ways, this is kind […]

They Have Everything At…

The Mall by Megan McCafferty

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Normally, I don’t go for bildungsroman tales. I have no desire to relive my younger days through fictional surrogates, nor do I often find the protagonists interesting enough to care about. They’re all either too smart for their own good or too dumb for the purposes of entertainment. But set one in a mall in the early-90s? Now you’re speaking my language. And Megan McCafferty definitely needs to speak it because this story is stretched as thinly as possible. It works because of the goodwill […]

Lucky Indeed

How Lucky by Will Leitch

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Will Leitch has long been one of my favorites, if not my favorite sports writer. I’ve followed his career since the early days of Deadspin and though I was sad when he left, I liked how both his career and the site itself blossomed as a result. He’s a fun, friendly, approachable guy who has the ability to cut through the bs in a polite but focused way. Leitch’s approachable nature is why he’s the first person I ever decided to stand in line for […]



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