Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

December 2023 Leftovers

Mandarin Plaid by SJ Rozan

Lady Killer, Volume 1 by Joëlle Jones

Zatanna: The Jewel of Gravesend by Alys Arden

Batman, Vol. 6: Graveyard Shift by Scott Snyder

The Confession by Domenic Stansberry

A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle

Joe Dogs: The Life and Crimes of a Mobster by Joseph Iannuzzi

Robert B. Parker's Cheap Shot by Ace Atkins

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

by Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas. We may need to dispense with the cold/snow songs. They’re about as realistic as Santa at this point. Mandarin Plaid **** SJ Rozan continues to improve with each book in this series. This one has layers and moves well to its conclusion. I’m not gonna be totally sold on a white person writing from the perspective of an AAPI one but I think Rozan does a better job with it than she did in the first one. May have to go long with […]

May-July Leftovers

There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History by Rory Carroll

City of Dreams by Don Winslow

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Tripwire by Jack Reacher

Baby Moll by John Farris

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle

The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

X by Davey Davis

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship by Harvey Araton

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen

The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Ex Machina Book Four by Brian K. Vaughan

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite

Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell

The Crust on Its Uppers by Derek Raymond

That Kind of Danger by Donna Masini

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Spenser Confidential by Ace Atkins

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Weyward by Emilia Hart

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel by Ellen Raskin

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

by Leave a Comment

I usually do these at the end of the month but then I went through a big reading slump March-May. And then I roared back but realized I was behind. So apologies for this being so long. There Will Be Fire **** A good, readable text on a moment in history I knew little about. Even after reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, I still had a lot of problem keeping track of all the socio-political dynamics so it’s good that Rory Carroll makes it accessible […]

April 2023 Leftovers

Lady Boss by Jackie Collins

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Flux by Jinwoo Choo

The Cutie by Donald Westlake

The Boy with the Faster Brain by Peter Shankman

The Widening Gyre by Robert B. Parker

by Leave a Comment

Happy spring! Lady Boss** So after two books and almost 2k pages of enough internalized misogyny to make Phyllis Schlafly blush, with stories chock full of men and women who will literally hump anyone and anything, Jackie Collins suddenly decides to make Lucky purchase a movie studio…in order to get rid of casting couches and male dominance in favor of female-driven movies that are less horny. What? Whatever. I’ll still keep reading this garbage. The Hunting Party*** I was prepared to write about this being […]

Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, Brookline, and Boston

Boston Strong: A City's Triumph Over Tragedy by Casey Sherman, David Wedge

by Leave a Comment

This is the story of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, told from the perspectives of the civilians and police officers who were there that day. A few days ago I watched from my window as an endless stream of marathoners ran past, cheered on by the masses of people who’d showed up to watch despite the drizzly day. I live just a couple of miles from the finish line in Copley Square, so people were looking pretty haggard but thrilled as they passed me. It’s […]

The Departed

At End of Day by George V. Higgins

by Leave a Comment

Been reading a lot of Boston crime novels lately so it made sense for me to finally circle back to George V. Higgins’ final work. My journey with Higgins is an interesting one. I first read The Friends of Eddie Coyle ten years ago and while I thought it was good, I really had no idea how to appreciate. Its dialogue-heavy approach with a large heap of verisimilitude made me feel like I was reading transcripts of a conversation between gangsters and cops rather than a typical […]

March 2023 Leftovers

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Cammalleri

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Tina, Mafia Soldier by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli

The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder by Susan Wels

Every Man a King by Walter Mosley

The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates

Robert B. Parker's Lullaby by Ace Atkins

The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

Play the Fool by Lina Chern

by Leave a Comment

Man, that month went fast The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion**** I might have a lot more to say about this one had I finished it weeks ago but I’ll be honest, I’m starting to hit my limit on books about tech geniuses that the public discovers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be only after they’re handed billions of dollars. Theranos, Uber and now WeWork all run by self-glorifying con artists. This book is as well done as the […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo