Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The culmination of nine books of story.

How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #9) by Louise Penny

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This is the closest I have ever been to giving one of these books five stars. I think I might have even done it if I’d been able to read the book faster, but since I was stuck with audio CD’s from my library, which I could only listen to in my car, my time with the story stretched out and I was able to think about it more rationally than I would have if were sitting on my couch frantically turning pages to find […]

“Breakfast with the Borgias.”

A Pocket Full of Rye (Miss Marple, #7) by Agatha Christie

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This one was really good! I think it might be my favorite of the Miss Marple books I’ve read so far, which is about half of them. (Until now I liked A Murder is Announced the best, because it had so much of Miss Marple in it, but this one barely features her at all, and it was quite good, so who knows what my standards even are anymore.) This is one of her infamous nursery rhyme mysteries (I think she did three or four […]

“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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I don’t have the time or energy to write as much or as deeply as I would like to about this strange, 100+ year old book, so I’m just going to settle with posting some brief thoughts below. Somehow I managed to make it out of years and years of schooling, with two English degrees, without reading this book. Which is right up my alley! All that discussion of monsters and things that are taboo swathed in metaphor. I love that shit. When I first […]

Discussing a beloved favourite in book club can be disheartening

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

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4.5 stars Official book description: The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway – a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. […]

Seriously, is no one else bothered about there being zero wagers in this book?

The Wallflower Wager (Girl Meets Duke, #3) by Tessa Dare

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Much better than her last book. And for once the hero isn’t a man who thinks he’s broken and thus doesn’t deserve love. She’s played that card way too often. The premise here is that Penny, the titular wallflower who resigned herself to being a spinster ten years before, has a ton of animals in her care, and her family is threatening to move her back to her ancestral home if she doesn’t: a) Get rid of most of the animals, b) Get a new […]

Thanks to all the Cannonballers who reviewed this. I picked it up way sooner because of that than I would have otherwise.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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You guys gotta read this shit. I listened to the audiobook version, and I kept looking for reasons to listen, it was so compelling. Just really solid investigative journalism into a story that seems unbelievable when you string it all together. By now, not many people haven’t heard of Elizabeth Holmes and her sham Silicon Valley start-up company, Theranos, but just in case you haven’t, Holmes started Theranos in 2003 just after dropping out of Stanford. Her dream was to produce a medical device that […]



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