Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Generational Trauma

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

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“Will anything save me from this months-long reading slump I’m in?” so I cried. Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice came close but I think that was largely due to the fact that I haven’t read many stories set in India so I didn’t know the familiar tips and tricks Stateside writers do. Aside from that one, I’ve read a lot of good stuff this year but I’ve also quit a lot because…well I don’t know the “because.” Have my standards gotten higher? Am I just tired of […]

A meta murder mystery about writing murder mysteries.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

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I had a really good time with this book. I am honestly pleased with most mysteries that I read because something about the genre makes me inherently happy, but I am always very excited when I find one that goes above and beyond the expectations of the genre, and plays around a little. This one definitely did that. It was like brain candy for me. A little treat. The book is split into two parts, the first being a rough draft of a murder mystery […]

Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman

The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay

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Read as part of CBR14 Bingo: cozy. The main character is a narcoleptic and his body frequently drags him off into a deep, cozy sleep.  It’s clear that I need to read more of Paul Tremblay’s work. While I didn’t love The Pallbearer’s Club, I enjoyed Tremblay’s writing style. He came across as accessible and fun, someone I could easily digest while providing enough pathos for his protagonists to feel like they are more than literary ciphers. I grabbed this on a lark in a bookstore, […]

Does Crime Pay?

Boss of Bosses: The Fall of the Godfather: The FBI and Paul Castellano by Andris Kurins and Joseph F. O'Brien

Sacred by Dennis Lehane

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I hadn’t meant to review these books together but I finished Sacred sooner than I anticipated and it just makes sense to cover them both in one review…   Boss of Bosses I just finished rewatching The Godfather in honor of its 50th anniversary and I decided to tackle this one because the agents applied the movie title as a sobriquet for Paul Castellano, the mob boss of the Gambino crime family who is perhaps most famous as being the guy in John Gotti’s way that got killed in […]

January 2022 Leftovers

Hit Parade by Lawrence Block

Sex Criminals, Volume 1: One Weird Trick by Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky

Devils In Exile by Chuck Hogan

Ex Machina, The Deluxe Edition: Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

Munich by Robert Harris

Shella by Andrew Vachss

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz

No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfeld

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

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My resolution for Cannonball Read in 2022 is to only write reviews where I feel like I have much to say and then dump the others in a singular post at the end of the month to track how much I’ve read. This’ll spare me from writing 250+ words about books that I can’t even think of a hundred for. So… Hit Parade **** I enjoy these books and while this is the one I maybe enjoyed the least (did EVERY story need cutaway conversations with […]

I always had a soft spot for the ol’ spook

Who Was Edgar Allan Poe? by Jim Gigliotti

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Once you recommend one book in the Who Was series (Who Was, Who Is, even What Is) you have pretty much said everything you need about them. They are fun, simple, and while might not get “down and dirty” you do find a little dust here and there. I tend to like the books about people over the “things” or events (though the Ice Age was interesting as it showed that we are still learning about it, even though it seems like something that is […]



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