Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Try to look away from the game of living and watching living

Spectators by Brian K Vaughan

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Spectators by Brian K Vaughan and illustrator Niko Henrichon is a train wreck I could not stop reading. This graphic novel (due late fall 2025) is in the vein of Revival by Tim Seeley and artist Mike Norton, and The Walking Dead but with fewer zombies and more ghosts.  When I finished my reader copy (and in fact through it) I thought it was the most screwed up book I’ve read in a while! DAMN! What an awesome read! There is so much going on […]

A selection of books from the last several months

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry

Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

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I’ve been pretty terrible this year. I haven’t been reading very much, and what little reading I have done hasn’t inspired much writing. So I’m just going to throw these reviews into a box, just to remind myself that I like doing this. Y: The Last Man (Vol. 1) (3 stars) Set in a post-apocalyptic America where all mammals with a Y-chromosome (including sperm and embryos) suddenly and simultaneously die – except for Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. What’s left is a world […]

September 2023 Leftovers

Ex Machina, Book Five by Brian K. Vaughan

Windfall by Wendy Corsi Staub

The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins

The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri

Guts and Genius: The Story of Three Unlikely Coaches Who Came to Dominate the NFL in the '80s by Bob Glauber

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Let’s please do something about climate change before it’s too late. I miss fall. And far more importantly: people’s lives are at stake. Ex Machina Book Five **** Mixed feelings on how this series ended. I think in many respects, the superhero stuff was handled better than the political angle through most of its run. That’s not something I thought I’d be saying after the first book. Making Mayor Hundred a contrarian centrist type was uninspired back then and comes off as even more annoying […]

“I’ll say it again, ideas are fragile things and sometimes it takes multiple people to pull a good one out of the ether. Just make sure everyone is pulling in the same direction.

Saga (Volume 10) by Brian K Vaughan

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CBR Bingo – Picture This Saga has always been a graphic roller coaster of emotion and violence wherein you’re laughing one minute, gasping the next, grimacing as you turn the page, and tearing up as you finish the volume. That said, the last issue was a coaster that ended with a straight drop into a splash pad of utter misery, leaving you stunned. Thus, it was hard to go on after volume 9 because of (MAJOR SPOILER REDACTED) but I felt I had dragged my […]

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

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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 […]

“It’s not like I grow up to be some great war hero or any all-important savior but thanks to my parents at least I get to grow old. Not everyone does.”

Saga (Volume 9) by Brian K Vaughan

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Back again with another Saga installment! I can’t believe I’m almost finally caught up. What a roller coaster this series is. I saw that when this series first came out, it was billed as “Star Wars meets Game of Thrones” and I give two thumbs up to that comparison. The only thing I would clarify there is that it’s less “Star Wars meets Game of Thrones” and more “Game of Thrones set in a Star Wars-ish Universe” because every other volume has it’s own Red […]



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