Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

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I recently decided to re-read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (it was my choice for my book group). It was as fun as I remembered. Carter’s sexy takes on traditional fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Puss in Boots” is at times over-the-top in its prose, humor, and horror – which suits her feminist takes on damsels in all sorts of distress perfectly. She delivers a great vampire tale, “The Lady of the House of Love,” too.  But I think […]

The Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris

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I was telling my wife this morning that the British write the best spy novels and it’s not even close. Le Carré. Deighton. Herron (I’ve never been able to connect with his but I’m trying desperately). And now, this guy Oliver Harris, who I had never even heard of until I read Max Read’s indispensable Substack. I was initially intrigued by a spy novel set in Kazakhstan. I like to read books where espionage takes place outside the glamor centers of Europe or the misunderstood […]

Another win from this author!

Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Abíké Íyímídé

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. Don’t go in expecting another thriller like Ace of Spades and you’ll be fine. This is more of a straight mystery than Íyímídé’s debut; it is slower paced and there is both more passing of actual time in the story, and time spent with characters just talking to each other. In a way, it’s a lot more atmospheric than Ace of Spades. It sort of traded in the […]

“A dilemma, my father used to say, is nothing but two bad options.”

One Puzzling Afternoon by Emily Critchley

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I started this book with minimal expectations, having never heard of the book or the author, and I can now say this book wasn’t for me. Overall it was paced too slow and the book was too long for me to find it enjoyable or gripping, but it wasn’t so bad that I stopped outright (plus, it was for a book club and I tend to see book club picks through to the end). The subject matter of this book is heavy and for me […]

“I think you’ll find ‘in heat’ only applies to dogs. De Niro is a man, an acting man”

The Clementine Complex by Bob Mortimer

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Hey y’all long-time-no-see! I’ve missed this so! Much like our trusty narrator Gary, I also script entire conversations with local squirrels when I walk through town. I have a regular rodent repartee while walking to the bookstore (I KNOW!) every day.  Unlike Gary, I have not been pulled into a conspiracy involving novelty print socks, a shady detective agency, an elderly hacker, and a corn-cob shaped USB dongle. This certainly isn’t a complaint; I am quite happy in my lane at the moment and I […]

A burnt out Millennial medium and the ghost of her dead best friend solve crimes. Yes you should read it.

Grave Expectations (Grave Expectations, #1) by Alice Bell

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I knew as soon as I read the blurb for this one early in 2023 that it was going to be a book For Me. Sometimes I do turn out to be wrong about these things, but in this case I was very much right. I had such a good time with this book. (And I’ve had ridiculously good luck with mysteries this year, most of which are having fun with the traditional mystery format/genre). The premise here is that Claire is a thirty-something down-on-her-luck […]



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