Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A locked room mystery that is also a dark comedy and a reflection on mental health

Anxious poeple by Fredrik Backman

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Fredrik Backman is a Swedish novelist who broke out a few years ago with the novel A Man Called Ove.  He is also a genius, which is proved by his latest offering Anxious People.  I have read everything he has written which has been published in English.  His latest might be his best (or at least a close second behind Ove). The premise is pretty simple.  A bank robber, who makes the mistake of trying to rob a cashless bank, escapes by running into an […]

A bit of a disappointment from a favourite author #BookClub

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay

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Bingo square: Book Club I was super excited when my book club (internationals/ex-pats in my city who get together and read fantasy) agreed to read the newest Guy Gavriel Kay book. I’ve been absolutely loving GGK the past year or so (even if I haven’t written reviews of Tigana or A Song for Arbonne yet). Unfortunately, A Brightness Long Ago did not live up to my expectations. Set in Batiara, a world like Renaissance Italy, the story follows Danio Cerra as he saves a young female […]

Sometimes Your Shallowness is So Thorough, It’s Almost Like Depth (CBR12Bingo: Book Club)

Choose Wonder Over Worry by Amber Rae

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If something applies to everyone, then it’s functionally useless. Any time I see a facebook post reading “you’re beautiful and things will get better” I think “OK. And?” I guess that’s my way of saying that I’m not really a good self-help book candidate, as if the Daria quote of the title wasn’t enough of a tip-off. But, it’s what got chosen for my work book club, so I might as well unload my strongest vitriol here so as not to offend the chooser of […]

“Insidious, these false versions of superiority and ease we project onto other families: how often they blind us to the surer comforts of our own.”

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

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Holy hell. Did this book make me forget about quarantine and the hell that is our lives in this country right now. I guess there’s nothing better for misery than reading about people that have it worse than you, and that they have no one to blame but themselves. This book was insane. I hated pretty much every single character (INCLUDING CHILDREN), and yet couldn’t put it down. From the opening quote, I knew I was in for a ridiculous story: There is so tantalizing […]

Mystery and murder and mayhem IN SPACE

Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre

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#CBR12 Bingo: Book Club (this was a pick in my fantasy/sci-fi book club a few months back) Offical book description: Hundreds of miles above Earth, the space station Ciudad de Cielo – The City in the Sky – is a beacon of hope for humanity’s expansion into the stars. But not everyone aboard shares such noble ideals.   Bootlegging, booze, and prostitution form a lucrative underground economy for rival gangs, which the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to until a disassembled corpse is […]

Lying in bed, I abandoned the facts again and was back in Ambrosia.

Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

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CBR12Bingo – Book Club From the David Bowie Book Club – http://www.bowiebookclub.com/episodes/2018/5/19/billy-liar-by-keith-waterhouse One of the things that happens in so many of the “angry young man” books is that they’re desperately self-serious and ultimately unfunny. There’s a lot of self-loathing, not a lot of honest reflection, and plenty of feeling sorry for oneself. And while this book has all of that and more, it’s actually funny, which helps a lot. At first when I started reading this book, I thought it was a kind of […]



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