Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth.”

The Institute by Stephen King

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Welcome to The Institute, my favorite book of 2019. Was it the best book of 2019? Probably not. But I can’t think of a reading experience that I enjoyed more than this. This book brought me back to the feelings I had when I first discovered Stephen King, back in Junior High, staying up late at night, scared to death about what might happen to my favorite characters. Its been MANY years since those first late-night readings of The Shining and Thinner (not his greatest […]

“But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.”

Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher

White Night by Jim Butcher

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Trying so hard to finish up my Cannonball this year, so I’m hitting up my backlog of unreviewed books for the year. I read some (actually, SO MANY) great books that I just never got around to reviewing, and while perusing the list, I figured you can never go wrong with a little Harry Dresden/James Marsters action. What follows is not really a review…its seems to be more like my random thoughts about these two books, as it has been a while since I listened […]

An interesting twist on the “there’s only one bed” trope

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

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Official book description: Tiffy Moore and Leon Twomey each have a problem and need a quick fix. Tiffy’s been dumped by her cheating boyfriend and urgently needs a new flat. But earning minimum wage at a quirky publishing house means that her choices are limited in London. Leon, a palliative care nurse, is more concerned with other people’s welfare than his own. Along with working night shifts looking after the terminally ill, his sole focus is on raising money to fight his brother’s unfair imprisonment. […]

Inspector Rebus goes to London

Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin

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I’m a big fan of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series.  His novels hit all my detective novel sweet spots- good writing, a good mystery and the location as its own character. This was an old one (published in 1994!) but it fell fortuitously into my hands while I was on a trip to the UK earlier this month. Unlike most of the other Rebus novels I’ve read, Scotland is not the setting for this one- it has Rebus on loan to a London police precinct, […]

The Holiday, but with less romance and more self-empowerment

Swapping Lives by Jane Green

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Vicki Townsend is a 30 something London singleton who works as an editor at Poise!, a popular UK woman’s magazine.  Amber Winslow is a 30 something ‘desperate housewife’ in the posh NYC commuter suburbs who has given up a promising legal career to be a stay at home mom and small town socialite.  Both Vicki and Amber feel like the grass is greener on the other side of the ‘married with children’ divide, and so when Poise! decides to do a feature on just that […]

The Monsters are the Heroes

Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung by Nina MacLaughlin

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Back when I was a kid, I loved reading about Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. I read about them in grade school and then, while taking Latin in high school, I read even more. Our copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology got quite a work out. But then, I moved on to other interests and pretty much forgot about mythology until recently, when people like novelist Madeline Miller and translator Emily Wilson have put the gods and goddesses back on my radar. Wake, Siren is […]



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