Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About TheShitWizard

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Drinking tea, reading books, petting cats. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: TheShitWizard's Quick Questions interview.)

TheShitWizard's Reviews:

Troy Story

Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry

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We’re just one week in to 2021 and I’m already failing at my resolution to write reviews as soon as I finish a book. I blame Antifa. Anyhoo, tearing myself away from The Stupidest Coup, Troy was the perfect book to start my year with and Stephen Fry the perfect host. I’d already devoured Mythos which dealt with the birth of the gods, and Heroes which dealt with the age of Heracles, Theseus and co, so it was a safe bet that I’d love this […]

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

Gonzo by Hunter S Thompson (edited by Steve Crist & Laila Nabulsi)

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In May 1998, I was handed a copy of Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by my new boyfriend. 22 years later, my love affair with both is still going strong. Thompson’s writing lit my brain up in a way I’d never really experienced before. Savagely funny and incredibly astute, especially when taking aim at the assassins of the American Dream, he even managed to make me understand American politics for a while (although this only ever lasts for as long as I’m […]

News from back then

Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorian Ancestors by Jan Bondeson

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Strange Victoriana, the first from my massive pile of Christmas swag, is an entertaining collection of the weird, wonderful, spooky, salacious, and sometimes downright macabre stories taken from the Illustrated Police News (IPN) – an immensely popular tabloid of the time (you’ll have seen some of its illustrations before, particularly if you’ve ever had any kind of interest in the Jack the Ripper case which the IPN went to town on). Victorians are often thought of as incredibly repressed and prudish, while a quick peruse […]

The King who brought back partying

A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration by Jenny Uglow

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Charles II is an interesting figure to me, partly because he seems so much more human than the joyless Oliver Cromwell who’d preceded him having lopped Charles’ dad’s head off (also interesting to me, as despite my reading habits I’m actually anti-monarchy) but mostly influenced by the fact that before reading this, pretty much everything I knew about him was gleaned from Horrible Histories (and this song in particular – to be fair, they do a pretty decent job of covering the highlights). Thanks to […]

Best read with tissues handy

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

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Everything I Never Told You isn’t the type of book I normally read, and nor was it what I expected at all – thinking I was getting some kind of murder mystery, what I got was a quietly devastating portrayal of a family hurting from all of its repressed hopes, dreams, desires and resentments. Lydia, the beloved eldest child of Marilyn and James Lee, is found dead in the lake near their home. Blond haired blue eyed Marilyn had always wanted to become a doctor, […]

Blood in the streets

Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury

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Gangs of New York is exactly the sort of book that I’d like to use to beat some sense into the types of people always looking back fondly to the ‘good old days’ (which are always much better when seen through rose-tinted glasses and presume that the person looking back would have been a rich, white man to elevate themselves above all the shit),  a comprehensive look at the many, many stampings, stabbings, robberies, murders, riots and much more perpetrated by the incredible and vast […]



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