Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When You’re Too Hard Core for Raymond Chandler

Fast One by Paul Cain

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Bingo square – People This noir classic was created when Paul Cain patched together five stories that he had written for the detective magazine Black Mask.  Published in 1933, it soon became famous as the book that was just too hardboiled to be fashioned into a movie.  And seriously, it is, even by today’s standards.  Daaaaamn son. Paul Cain was by then a slippery character in Hollywood.  That was not his real name, nobody was quite sure where he was from (spoiler, Iowa, actually), and […]

I don’t think Bill W. saw this gal coming!

Other Broken Things by C. Desir

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Oh boy! Did I hate this book by C. Desir for the first few chapters: Natalie is a spoiled rich girl and is a “drunk” and of course thinks she does not have a problem; that everyone parities. Her character was a cliché from the first word. She, of course, blames everyone else for her problems, but does not admit they are problems. Even during a cliched moment (that I had really hoped was not going to happen) near the end of the book, she […]

“I buried my hands in my pockets, curious at the enormity of it all.”

Opioid, Indiana by Brian Allen Carr

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Brian Allen Carr’s short novel is an odyssey of a week in a normal life, broken up by long chapters for each day. The days are long, but the book is quick. Opioid, Indiana is about a teenager called Riggle. His dad is dead and his mom his dead. He’s been passed around the foster system and even the homes of his family, depending on whether someone wants to go through the hassle of feeding a kid to collect checks. Riggle is from Texas, but […]

eating vegetables: the essay collection

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

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Now here me out: there are lots of reasons to eat vegetables. Sometimes your body is in revolt because you’ve had nothing but pizza all weekend. Sometimes you’ve made a new commitment to “take better care” of yourself. Sometimes you just really want some kale, damn it. Sometimes you just want to smother some broccoli in neon-orange-movie-theater-nacho cheese. Vegetables are good for you, vegetables are tasty, they can be prohibitively expensive- especially if fresh, but sometimes you just have to fight your way through a […]

It was magic, until it suddenly wasn’t: CBR Bingo – Pajiba

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Ever since Daisy Jones and The Six was released, it has been on my radar, in particular because it was highly praised on my two favorite pop culture websites Pajiba and Lainey Gossip .  When CBR Bingo was announced, I instantly knew what my Pajiba square book would be.  My first title for this review was, “What I imagined the 70s rock n’ roll scene was like”, but while Daisy Jones and The Six is a great time capsule into that era, that is not what the […]

And the Headstones Climbed up the Hill

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

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Last year I read Nicholas and Alexandra and discovered a whole new, extremely specific genre that I love: nonfiction books about some point in time where everything came together in a very particular way that changed the entire course of history. I’m very pleased to say that Dreamland is now the second book I can add to that category (which really needs a snappier name). Dreamland is actually two stories which fit together perfectly to create something really terrible: it’s the story of Purdue Pharma’s […]



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