Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Pay attention to what you pay attention to

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green

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Joining Cannonball Read has meant that I’m now part of the group of people reviewing books. Here’s a very obvious statement – reviewing something is quite different from simply enjoying that thing, even if you naturally have thoughts about it, maybe even sometimes discuss it with other people. To commit yourself to a few hundred (or more) words about a topic, and then to rate it – and share that with other people – it’s both a work that is very internal (we really must […]

too light, too predictable, and also kind of too straight

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

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I’d been reading a lot of heavy stuff lately, so I decided to break up that rhythm with something a little on the lighter side. Cue the audiobook of the first installment of Elle Cosimano’s new series, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It. It’s a pretty straightforward mistaken identity comedic romantic suspense novel, in which a single mom writer of, yes, romantic suspense novels gets mistaken for a contract killer and gets hired to bump off a woman’s husband who, as it turns out, is a […]

“If you see something, say something.”

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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I cannot remember where I first saw The House in the Cerulean Sea (2021) by TJ Klune, but I may have been looking for available audiobooks at the library. It has primarily positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and I thought it might be a fun listen during my commute. In the end, I thought it was all right. I liked some parts, but on the whole it felt too long and I was not fully invested in the characters. My favorite part of the book was […]

Oh my god. If they say “movie in my mind” one more time, I’m gonna lose it!

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

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Uuuuugggggghhhhhh. I have really got to take a break from thrillers for a while. This book sat on my TBR for about a year before I finally checked the audio version out from the library. The premise seems strong: Charlie, our heroine, needs to get away. Her college roommate and best friend, Maddie, was murdered, and Charlie is not doing well. This being the early 90s, Charlie finds a ride on her college ride board from Josh, though right away there seems to be something […]

“we are standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something”

Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

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I still have yet to read Normal People, Sally Rooney’s hit novel, or watch its adaptation. I do a lot with Irish literature, but somehow that hype train mostly bypassed me (and I’ll be honest, it’s probably due at least in part to the snobbishness of the rather arbitrary line between literary and mass market fiction–I love some mass market but the fact that this is work for me means I prioritize the literary stuff). Nonetheless, her follow-up, Beautiful World, Where Are You? was chosen by the book club […]

What will you do with the time you have left?

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

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So….I downloaded this audiobook on Libby, thinking that it was a different TJ Klune. I thought I was borrowing The House in the Cerulean Sea. So I was Extremely Confused to be listening to a story about a real a-hole of a lawyer who dies suddenly but ends up sticking around as a ghost. This is no one’s fault but my own, of course, though it may explain why it took me a while to warm up to this story. Wallace Price is the a-hole […]



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