Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To Live and Die in LA

Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley

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After going through most of Walter Mosley’s Leonid McGill series, I decided to switch back to the books that drew me to his work in the first place: good ol’ Easy Rawlins. Having read most of the McGill books (and unlike the Rawlins series, they’re mostly the same in terms of plot and tone) I have a fresh perspective on the Rawlins ones and Mosley’s evolution as a writer. McGill has always felt like the character Mosley wanted to write but didn’t get to until […]

“Leah, I think your sister is on illicit drugs” Bess Cohen

California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas by Penelope Bagieu

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A few of us probably had a “California Dreamin” moment or two. But a gal named Ellen Cohen had one when a little folk group called The Journeymen decided to move there. Her first dream was New York City and Broadway. But had she stayed there, California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas would not have been created, as there would have not been a little group called The Mamas & the Papas. Had a girl called Ellen not decided to make […]

Reviews are divided, but I land on the side of loving it.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

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I know that this is turning into a ‘love it or hate it’ type book (even amongst the Cannonball reviews), but I personally really enjoyed it. We are introduced to Kya, a girl living in the marshes of North Carolina in the 60s. Her dysfunctional family lives a secluded life away from town, subject to poverty and her father’s drunken abuse. One by one her mother and siblings flee, leaving Kya alone with her volatile father, until one day, he too disappears. Kya becomes known […]

#CBR10Bingo: Birthday – All the Crooked Saints

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#CBR10 Bingo: Birthday (Ms Stiefvater’s birthday is November 11th) From Goodreads, because it sums it up nicely: Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle. Here is a thing everyone fears: What it takes to get one. Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars. At the heart of this place you will find the Soria family, who all […]

In the words of Poehler, “Good for her, not for me.” Another laborious tale that I slogged through.

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Siiiiiigh. I know you aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I mean, it’s there, just asking for an appraisal. And when this came through as I checked it out in audio format, with the picture of what looks like a christening gown, I was like, “Eesh. Here we go.” This is one of the picks for the Schaumburg library book club, not a thing I would gravitate toward and I did my best to give it a fair shake but this […]

They don’t give that Pulitzer out for just anything.

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American Pastoral won the pulitzer and boy oh boy it is deserved.  This novel is a masterpiece of storytelling. Swede Luvov is a small town hero: star athlete, considerate son, professional Jewish American businessman, and married to a former Miss Jersey.  By all accounts, he is living the American Dream, until his daughter tears the fabric of his family and life apart as an anti-war terrorist. It takes us a little while to get there though, as the novel is framed as the musings of […]



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