Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Don’t Mean to Spy

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

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I’ve tried Rachel Kushner’s books before but they’re a little over my head. However, I’m on a spy kick and it just so happens that her new one is a critically acclaimed spy novel and, while knowing it would still be different from the usual pulpy thrill of typical espionage fare, I decided to try it. The cool thing about writing espionage is that we all desire to lead secret lives and espionage fiction allows us to explore that. The sad necessity of hiding human […]

The Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris

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I was telling my wife this morning that the British write the best spy novels and it’s not even close. Le Carré. Deighton. Herron (I’ve never been able to connect with his but I’m trying desperately). And now, this guy Oliver Harris, who I had never even heard of until I read Max Read’s indispensable Substack. I was initially intrigued by a spy novel set in Kazakhstan. I like to read books where espionage takes place outside the glamor centers of Europe or the misunderstood […]

Ohhh Mexico

Mexico Set by Len Deighton

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I’m going to review this under the assumption that the reader has read the first book in Len Deighton’s Game, Set, Match trilogy. If you have not, I encourage you to do so (it’s very good!) and skip this review until you have. I liked this one almost as much as Berlin Game, perhaps even more! I love how Len Deighton writes books where he ratchets up the tension just by having people talk. It’s fun. His dialogue is great and it works well to building the story. […]

C I Yikes

Libra by Don DeLillo

Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer

The Ghost by Robert Harris

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Recently, I read three different books featuring CIA chicanery (two were fictional). This was unintentional but I figured since the themes were similar, I’d just batch review them rather than do individual ones. Libra***** This was a re-read. I liked it the first time. I loved it now that I: a. had a better since of the Oswald timeline after reading Posner’s Case Closed and b. could appreciate the meta-narrative structure in a way I couldn’t before. This is the only DeLillo book I can really […]

Beyond the Wall

Berlin Game by Len Deighton

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My wife and I honeymooned in Berlin. A lot of folks are surprised by this but we’re not beach people. We like to explore histories, interesting cultural icons, the unusual. Berlin was perfect for that. We had a great nine days there and it was a good start to our marriage. Berlin is sort of a Frankenstein’s monster of a city: a pastiche of prewar romanticism, total ruin, capitalist-western occupation and totalitarian communist occupation make up a sort of fascinating urban landscape. It is doing […]

Fighting the War of Words

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

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There’s always a risk in going back to a longer book after failing with it the first time. You may invest too much of your time without the payoff you were hoping for. American Psycho is a rare exception that worked for me. Most of them didn’t. Tree of Smoke didn’t work either. This was my third attempt with it and I powered through it because there was enough interest in the characters to see where it was going but no. I don’t want to say it was […]



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