Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Trapped in a cell

The Cell by Colin Forbes

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While enjoying our recent release from latest phase of lockdown, it feels so nice to eat food someone else has cooked, even if the weather can veer from burning hot to pouring with rain during the same meal, I wandered into to our small independent bookshop and found a book by an author I read voraciously as a teenager.  The Cell by Colin Forbes was published in 2002, and it shows in its approach to the then contemporary environment of post September the 11th. I […]

“There is still a real life to be lived, there are still real things to be done.”

No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

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I knew nothing about this book when I bought it. I saw it on a list of new releases, thought the cover looked kind of cool, and added it to my cart from my local book store. I had never heard of Patricia Lockwood, had no idea what kind of writer she was (SPOILER ALERT: I STILL DON’T REALLY KNOW), and didn’t know anything about the plot. I started it, struggled hard with the format and writing style, and put it down. The streaming train […]

“Writing is the most important thing.”

The Notebook by Agota Kristof

The Proof by Agota Kristof

The Third Lie by Agota Kristof

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This trilogy by Hungarian writer Agota Kristof is simply amazing. I read through the three novels quickly, and I’m still reeling from the story she tells about twin brothers who endured violence and privation in WWII, separation during the Cold War, and a troubling reunion afterward. Certainly, these novels can be read as the story of a divided and reunified Europe. They were written in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Soviet Union was in dissolution and the wall came down in Berlin. How […]

Archer hits the bullseye

Turn A Blind Eye by Jeffrey Archer

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Lockdown appears to have been good for Jeffrey Archer as he has published two books in his William Warwick series in six months with another due out later this year.  That’s perhaps for the best as each book ends with the current thread tied up, but another dangling tantalizingly out of reach. The book starts with William prepared to resign, but since the cover refers to Detective Inspector William Warwick, I don’t believe I’m spoiling anything by saying he doesn’t.  Instead, we follow the well-trodden […]

I can’t fully get on board the Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

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Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad won both the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, and part of me is sheepish that I can’t get behind that level of admiration. While the novel is powerful and at times poignant, I had a fundamental issue with its execution. The novel focuses on Cora, a young slave on a Georgia cotton plantation whose mother was infamous for having been the only slave to ever escape that estate. Cora is an outcast even […]

Musings on nature and a bit of tranquility

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

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As a fan of Helen Macdonald’s lovely memoir H is for Hawk, I was happy to receive Vesper Flights, a collection of her new and previously published essays, for Christmas. If you have read any of Macdonald’s work, you will know that she is an acutely personal writer, connecting her thoughts about nature to deeper personal feelings, and even modern issues and current events. Vesper Flights comprises 41 individual essays, so if you want to dip your toe into Macdonald’s writing, and maybe generate a […]



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