Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Revisiting a Book I Thought was Fine the First Time. Still Fine.

Angels Fall by Nora Roberts

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Scribd does this thing where after you’ve listened to a couple of book, they make all the other books you want to listen to “unavailable” until the day after your subscription renews. It’s annoying. Anyway, after listening to the Murderbot Diaries, all the scifi I planned to listen to was unavailble, but a couple of Nora Roberts’ books were available. Knowing that I would only be able to listen to one, I flipped a quarter and picked Angels Fall. I read this one years ago […]

I expected too much from this one.

Alphabet Squadron (Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron, #1) by Alexander Freed

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I was disappointed in this one, considering how much I’ve enjoyed Freed’s other Star Wars stuff. Up until I read this book, I might have even told you he was the most talented Star Wars writer working today (Claudia Gray being a very close second). His Rogue One novelization was a piece of art. The short story he wrote for A Certain Point of View was extremely poignant. But Alphabet Squadron was just okay. There was really nothing special about it at all. Maybe I […]

This book almost killed me. Literally.

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman

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So, the book itself didn’t actually almost kill me- as much as it tried to do- but I just finished this audio book while driving home from work (yay essential workforce) on a highway that was not, in the slightest, plowed. I have been a New Englander my entire life. I like driving in the snow. I am confident, competent, and careful. This was the worst drive I have ever had- no hyperbole. A tractor trailer blew by me (only one lane, mind you) and […]

As the Prophets Say, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

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I cannot explain this book. It is an enemies to lovers story divorced from time, place and humanity while also steeped in all three. Red and Blue are operatives in opposites sides of a time war. I don’t have any idea who the sides are or why they fight. I don’t know what’s at stake. There is no good guy or bad guy. None of that matters though. What does matter are the letters Blue and Red exchange. Initially it’s two enemies taunting each other […]

It’s the end of the world as they knew it

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

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I’m a new-er fan of Erik Larson. I read Devil in the White City only last year (or last last year?) which makes me unique in these parts, these parts being the Chicagoland area. That book details the creation of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, as well as the horrific serial killings by H.H. Holmes during that time period, and it is compelling. It’s pretty much required reading here, much like (shudder) Kate Chopin’s The Awakening in Louisiana which I read, I dunno, 5 […]

Daisy Jones screams “Not Like Other Girls” from the bottom of Cliche Canyon

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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I have read this before. I have seen it. I have heard it. This book is like a transcription of a Behind the Music episode. Everyone waxing rhapsodic over the Sunset Strip in the 70s. Ugh. There is nothing unique or remarkable about this tale. No grand revelations, nothing that overcomes tropes, just archetypes smashing into archetypes while being saved-by-or-slaves-to tHe MuSic. I truly do not understand the rapturous reviews around Daisy Jones and The Six. There is nothing special about this story, nor is there anything special […]



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