Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About jeverett15

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39 years old. New Jersey resident. Fan of mystery novels, classic literature, and non-fiction about movies, television, sports, and American history.

jeverett15's Reviews:

Espionage is for the Birds

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry

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Shane Collins, the protagonist of The Peacock and the Sparrow, is a late-career spy playing out the string in a minor post in the kingdom of Bahrain. Rebellion is in the air, but the main opposition group is poorly-funded and lacking in weapons and material. Collins has a source inside the group, but isn’t sure how much he really knows and how much he is willing to divulge. Collins is also struggling to impress his much-younger boss, partly because he finds it hard to respect […]

Short Work

I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short

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For most of its brief length, I Must Say is a fairly good but standard exemplar of the celebrity memoir. The early struggle, the camaraderie of breaking into show business and finding your people, the name-droppy stories about show business parties,  and some behind the scenes anecdotes from his films and TV shows, which in Short’s case obviously includes SCTV, Three Amigos, SNL, Father of the Bride, winning a Tony, etc. (I Must Say was published in 2014, long before the advent of Only Murders […]

With Sisters Like These

Hello, Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

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William Waters’s birth is followed almost immediately by the death of his older sister, a shocking loss which traumatizes his parents and leaves unwilling or unable to raise their son with any love or affection. Finding consolation on the basketball court, William eventually makes his way to Northwestern University on an athletic scholarship. There he meets, or more accurately, is confronted by, Julia Padavano, a fellow student who has taken a fancy to him and has decided they should date. Before Will knows what has […]

Boom Goes the Dynamite

Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard

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Written and set about twenty years after the height of the peace-and-love Sixties, Elmore Leonard’s Freaky Deaky is populated with former protesters and idealists, now beaten down by the realities of the word and looking out for themselves. Robin and Skip were so invested in the movement they would up doing federal time for blowing up a government building. Now Skip works on creating explosions on movie sets and Robin writes romance novels under a pen name, but when they put together who it was […]

Compromising Positions

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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Polystyrene magnate Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from the driveway of his Middle Rock, Long Island estate one morning in 1980. After a very tense week in captivity, he is returned upon the payment of $250,000 ransom, but he is much the worse for wear. Nervous and panicky in the aftermath of his ordeal, Carl retreats from the world and is never the same man again. The kidnapping also severely impacts his wife Ruth, and their three children, Bernard (nicknamed Beamer), Nathan, and third sibling Jenny, […]

Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row Your Boat

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

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About ninety percent of the reason I chose this book was because Edward Herrmann (aka Richard Gilmore) was the narrator of the audiobook. The other ten percent was a lingering Olympic hangover. What didn’t factor into the equation was any particular fondness for, or interest in, the sport of rowing. I’ve never rowed and rowing was one of the sports I didn’t really get into during this summer’s games. It doesn’t really pop on television, at least in my opinion. Still, The Boys in the […]



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