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:

Motor City Showdown

City Primeval by Elmore Leonard

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Justified is one of my favorite TV shows of all-time, so when I read recently that the producers of that show are in talks to bring the character of Raylan Givens back in a new series, I quickly snapped up the book in question. At first, City Primeval seems like odd choice, since Raylan does not appear in it, but TV writers are clever and I’m sure they’ll figure something out. Otherwise, the novel is Leonard in top form and thus perfect fodder for television. […]

So You Think You Can Teach?

Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman

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Young, well-educated, and good-looking Sylvia Barrett is a first-year English teacher at Calvin Coolidge High, an underfunded inner city public school. She hopes to impart her love of literature on her students but is hampered by her inexperience, the students’ indifference, and the bewildering bureaucracy imposed on her by the administration. Intending to share some words of wisdom with her class on the first day, she instead finds herself unable to so much as get through taking attendance before the dismissal bell rings. Sylvia perseveres […]

Paperback Writer

Later by Stephen King

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Stephen King is a writer who can do anything, but should he? Later, his newest novel out in paperback from Hard Case Crime, is an unusual effort. It is perhaps best taken as a sort of exercise that doesn’t entirely succeed. It is an attempt to write a fairly typical King premise in the style of pulp fiction. Later is written entirely in the first person. The narrator, Jamie Conklin, is a young man relating events from his childhood through to adolescence. Jamie lives in […]

The Adventure of the Myopic Solicitor

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

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The unlikely duo in the title of Julian Barnes’s novel are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and George Edalji, a mixed-race son of a vicar who becomes the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Barnes follows each of them from their beginnings in life until the point at which circumstances conspire to throw them together. Sir Arthur’s life story is better known, but Barnes goes all the way back to the beginning when Arthur, son of a wastrel, resolves to make a […]

It’s Not About Arithmetic

Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel

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David Baddiel is a comedian from the UK who I’ve become familiar with through my love of panel shows. He is also in his own words one of the UK’s most famous Jews, because he makes his Jewishness part of his public identity in a way he believes many other British Jews are uncomfortable doing. The central premise of the book is that anti-Semitism isn’t taken as seriously as other forms of racism and discrimination, and in Baddiel’s opinion, it should be. A large part […]

Dice Games

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. by Robert Coover

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After he gets home from work, 56-year-old accountant J. Henry Waugh entertains himself with a simulated baseball game based on dice rolls and probability charts. As a kid who spent many a rainy summer afternoon playing Strat-O-Matic baseball, the concept was very familiar to me. However, unlike Strat-O-Matic, Henry’s game involves an entirely fictional league. All the teams and all the players on them are his invention. When he plays he rolls the dice for both teams and meticulously records every play on his scoresheets. […]



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