Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A merely OK book made much better by the voice cast

Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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From Goodreads: Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now. Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice […]

Requiem for the Aughts

Cherry by Nico Walker

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I have a feeling this is one of those books that will fall strictly in the love/hate divide. With major caveats, I’m in the former. I’m the same age as the lead character. Born in the 80s, bored in the 90s, bombed in the 00s. 9/11. The recession. And though I’ve never done drugs or served in the military, I could relate to this story. Because this is the story of too many people I know. People whose lives were used and abused overseas. People […]

Just Because It’s Brief Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Painful

Ablutions by Patrick DeWitt

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Do you love the show Intervention, but find it too glossy and upbeat? Do you feel the problem with Charles Bukowski is that he was just a bit too cheerful? Then this might just be the book for you. Ablutions is narrated by an unnamed Barman (I’d say he’s our protagonist but I’m not entirely sure that is the case) working in a deeply depressing, lowest-of-lowbrow Hollywood bar. Imagine all the magnificent wealth, glamour, and luxury of Hollywood. Cool, now imagine the polar opposite of […]

My least favorite of the series, but still worth reading, if you liked the first three.

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“Did you know,” said Patrick, addressing Seamus again, “that among the caribou herdsmen of Lapland, the top shaman gets to drink the urine of the reindeer that has eaten the magic mushrooms, and his assistant drinks the urine of the top shaman, and so on, all the way down to the lowest of the low who scramble in the snow, pleading for a splash of twelfth-generation caribou piss?” “I didn’t know that,” said Seamus flatly. “I thought it was your special field,” said Patrick, surprised. “Anyhow, […]

Life is just a bowl of (sour) cherries

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CBR10Bingo: Delicious Finding a book for this CBR10Bingo square was oddly tough for me, as nothing in my TBR list really jumped out at me as being obviously about food. When I started pulling my books off the shelf, one by one, and saw those gorgeous yellow cherries on the cover of Dina Nayeri’s Refuge, I knew this was the one.  Early in the book, Niloo’s father imparts his life’s philosophy to his young daughter.: “Life in Ardestoon is a shank of lamb so bursting […]

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

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So I really liked this book. I read a series either earlier this year or last year by Joe Hart, and it was very different from this book.  I guess that series was still science fiction-y, like this one, but it still felt very different. We begin this book by meeting Gillian, as she’s basically getting into a car accident with her husband.  We learn that he has this terrible brain disease called Losian’s, that’s similar to Alzheimer’s, but affects all ages.  He’s starting to […]



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