Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

May 2024 Leftovers

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Batmanga: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga, Vol. 1 by Jiro Kuwata

Magic: The Life of Earvin "Magic" Johnson by Roland Lazenby

Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald Westlake

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block

The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers by Mick Minas

Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon by Roland Lazenby

You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses

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June already? Sheesh. The Brass Verdict**** Ever since John Grisham lost his fastball in the late-90s, I’ve mostly forsaken legal thrillers. But I like the Bosch series and I wanted to read something LA-based and this delivered. It’s a fun plot with some legit exciting twists. Will probably go back to it at some point or maybe watch the show. Interior Chinatown*** I wish I liked this one more than I did. The satire is razor sharp, the story is deep and the pain is […]

April 2023 Leftovers

Lady Boss by Jackie Collins

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Flux by Jinwoo Choo

The Cutie by Donald Westlake

The Boy with the Faster Brain by Peter Shankman

The Widening Gyre by Robert B. Parker

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Happy spring! Lady Boss** So after two books and almost 2k pages of enough internalized misogyny to make Phyllis Schlafly blush, with stories chock full of men and women who will literally hump anyone and anything, Jackie Collins suddenly decides to make Lucky purchase a movie studio…in order to get rid of casting couches and male dominance in favor of female-driven movies that are less horny. What? Whatever. I’ll still keep reading this garbage. The Hunting Party*** I was prepared to write about this being […]

April 2022 Leftovers

Batman, Volume 3: Death in the Family by Scott Snyder

DC: The New Frontier, Volume 1 by Darwyn Cooke

Batman: Curse of the White Knight by Sean Gordon Murphy

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year-Secret City by Scott Snyder

Chances by Jackie Collins

Batgirl, Volume 1: Batgirl of Burnside by Cameron Stewart

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year-Dark City by Scott Snyder

Sonny: The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses, John "Sonny" Franzeze by S.J. Peddie

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch

Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman

Call Me a Cab by Donald Westlake

Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen

The Bouncer by David Gordon

Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø

Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL by R.D. Rosen

Concourse by S.J. Rozan

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Here are the books I read in April that didn’t merit a full review… Batman, Vol. 3: Death in the Family **** Reading a Batman-v-Joker comic is perfect for April Fools Day. I loved Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls run but wasn’t sure how I’d feel about him doing a Joker story combined with the extended Batman Family (which I’ve never been interested in). But this is a good story, a creepy one that continues to burnish Snyder’s credentials on this series. DC: The New Frontier, Volume […]

November Odds and Ends

The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake

The Dark Tower by CS Lewis

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahniuk

The Feathers of Death by Simon Raven

The Drowned Cities by Paulo Bacigalupi

Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

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The Hot Rock – 3/5 Stars A farcical kind of heist book. John Dortmunder is getting out of prision and his old pal immediately brings him a caper to work on. Together with three other specialists, the friends will be stealing an emerald from a museum that has cultural and sentimental value for two warring African nations. One of the nations currently possesses the emerald, while the other is hiring the thieves. Paid a salary, plus the promise of a large reward, Dortmunder begins to […]

Not Bond? Not James Bond?

Forever and a Death by Donald Westlake

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In a writers group I participate in via social media, someone asked the question a few months ago that if we could have three traits from authors, what would they be? I don’t remember my other two answers but the one I do remember is Donald Westlake’s versatility. The man wrote noir potboilers, political gags a la Ross Thomas, the sparse and sharp Parker series, the slyly comedic Dortmunder tales…he could do it all. He even had a hand at James Bond. Forever and a […]

Extra Reading

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

Players by Don DeLillo

A Stained White Radiance by James Lee Burke

Louise Hathcock: Queen of the State Line Mob by Robert Broughton

Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark

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I’m trying to document all of the books I read on here to better hit my cannonball numbers. These are ones I’ve been meaning to upload into combined reviews but haven’t. Some are good, some are eh, but most of them just didn’t merit a lot of words from me at the time I finished them for various reasons. Who Is Maud Dixon? *** For a similar identity-based thriller I read last year, a reviewer derisively pegged it as The Talented Mr. Rip-off. I didn’t […]



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