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:

Small Wonder

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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This is a very quick read but no less devastating for it. Set in Ireland at Christmastime 1985, Small Things Like These centers around Bill Furlong, who was born to a teenage mother. Mother and son were luckily taken in by a kind, wealthy woman, and thanks to her generosity Bill now has a very respectable middle-class life. He runs a business delivering coal and he and his wife have five children, all girls. They’ll never be rich but they’re ahead on all the bills […]

Will You Remember Me?

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

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An unnamed narrator lives on an unnamed island, alone since the deaths of her mother and father some years before. A novelist, her only friends are her editor and an old man who used to be her family’s handyman. When she isn’t writing, she spends most of her time ruminating on the curious nature of life on this island. At unpredictable intervals, things disappear from the island, even from each inhabitant’s memory. On the morning of a disappearance, they all wake up knowing that something […]

Riddle Me This

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

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I’m now two books into my much-belated journey into the world of Harry Potter and still very much enjoying the ride. Chamber of Secrets is a very typical second entry in many ways, opening with a bit of a recap of the events of the previous book, introducing some new characters, and increasing the level of danger facing our heroes. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are no longer first-years at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but they still have a lot to learn about […]

Gold Rush

Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman

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The perfect lead-in to this weekend’s Academy Awards ceremony, Michael Schulman’s Oscar Wars is a broad overview of Hollywood history filtered through the prism of their biggest night. In eleven chapters, he focuses in on the moments and the movements that have changed the movie business and the culture at large. The book starts, logically, at the beginning, as the nascent industry conceives of the Motion Picture Academy and its awards banquet. There are multiple motivations for doing so, from establishing film as a legitimate […]

Fixer-Upper

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

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The titular house is an old mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs, where Danny Conroy and his older sister Maeve grew up with their father Cyril, an emotionally distant real-estate magnate. Their mother is off in parts unknown, having left when Danny was a very young boy. Maeve picks up their father’s slack and become a sort of second mother to Danny, far more so than the woman Cyril makes his second wife. Their stepmother comes into the marriage with two daughters of their own, and her […]

Late to the Party

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

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So ends my reign as one of the last holdouts of my generation. I remember when this book first became a sensation and some of my middle-school classmates were reading it. Oh, how I scoffed. Children’s literature, at our age? Hadn’t we moved on? I was reading Orwell, Vonnegut, Salinger, etc. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to read a book about a kid younger than I was, magical powers or not. I clung to that position of unearned snobbery even as the […]



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