Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fuck your Southern “honor”

The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson

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CBR 17 BINGO: Culture, because the culture of the pre-American Civil War South is prominent in this book Erik Larson is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, and if American history is your jam, this is a must-read. Folks like myself who are less war-curious might still find it interesting; however, I felt it sometimes got bogged down in the logistics of pre-war strategy. I found the sections dedicated to the personalities involved and the beliefs of the times more interesting, and also more rage-inducing. […]

Search for the Historical Jesus

Zealot by Reza Aslan

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Bingo: Migrant. Jesus has often been identified as a migrant, although it is not likely he was born in Bethlehem and fled to Egypt; he was simply born in Nazareth. However, as he grew older, he likely did travel to local cities to work as a laborer. I have a mixed religious history. My grandfather was Jewish, and I am ethnically part Ashkanazi. I was raised a Catholic and while I stopped going to church in my teens, I remained a person of faith until […]

There were also nuns in the book

Danger to Others by Crites, Martha

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Bingo row 4 – red (Why did I splay out the book like this? To show how red it is.) I recently read and partially read a few books that should have been enjoyable, but they weren’t. Maybe I was in the wrong place for books I would have enjoyed at another time. Maybe those books just weren’t for me. But whatever it was, what I needed was murder mysteries. Danger to Others by Martha Crites is a standalone sequel to her first book. If […]

Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

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CBR Bingo: Green (also my very first Cannonball, yay?) After reading (and reviewing) the first two books in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic), I decided to keep going in chronological order. I’ve read (and loved) many of the series’ novels previously, but I’ve done it in a rather piecemeal fashion (I’ve completed the Death and City Watch subseries, as well as a smattering of other books). The third (overall) book in the series is Equal Rites, and is the […]

Settle Yourselves Down for a STORY.

The Knight of Maison-Rouge by Alexandre Dumas

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cbr17bingo Citizen How many times has The Three Musketeers been filmed?  Dumas knew how to tell a tale, even though he could be fairly verbose, at times.  But hey. when you get paid by volume, that makes sense. The Knight of Maison Rouge, the character named in the title, is a champion of Marie Antoinette, in that murky period in French history between the execution of her husband, Louis XVI, and her own.  The government consisted of various battling contingents of “citizens” each trying to […]

Citation and murder

All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby

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bingo row 5 – citizen S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed takes place in Flannery O’Connor’s south. The protagonist – even cites her because he is so very well read. The book is set c. 2017 and was published in 2023. Normally several years doesn’t make a big difference, but considering that topics included confederate statues being taken down, Black lives mattering, and racist cops, I think setting it pre-2020 makes a big difference. But I’m not Black and I’ve never been to Virginia so […]



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