Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Brief History? Worth Every One of the 686 Pages.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

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As I descend further into dad-hood, I find myself being more patient for longer books and movies. I mean, I recently sat through 3:15 of Barry Lyndon and loved almost every minute of it. So I figured it was finally time to tackle this one, a book which I must’ve started three or four times only to put off due to its length and a lack of patience trying to understand the Jamaican patois. Better late than never ’cause this book is great. I’m finding more and […]

June 2022 Leftovers

The Cage by Bonnie Kistler

Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg

Gone 'Til November by Wallace Stroby

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti

Survivor's Guilt by Robyn Gigl

The Old Man by Thomas Perry

Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy

The Drop by Michael Connelly

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw

Barbed Wire Heart by Tess Sharpe

Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

The Fury of Blacky Jaguar by Angel Luis Colón

He Kills Coppers by Jake Arnott

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

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I was dealing with work turmoil and on vacation for most of June so I didn’t get the chance to write as many in depth reviews as I’d have liked to. Which is a shame because some of these deserved a longer look; I just didn’t have the time or energy… The Cage **** I went back-and-forth on my review. I’ve been giving out a lot of 4-star reviews lately and considered docking the book for that reason since it’s very borderline. But the more I […]

double dipping with Rivers of London and River Cartwright

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aronovitch

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

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Once again, I am unhappy because I am all caught up in the Rivers of London universe. BUT- I thoroughly enjoyed this entry, and I was lucky enough to be able to dive right in to another irreverent British crime series! Amongst Our Weapons, the latest from Ben Aaronovitch, is a return to form. After the strange (but not entirely off-putting) Douglas Adams worship of False Value we have returned to the archaic and architectural weirdness of the rest of the Rivers of London series. It has […]

“But there are many fools in the world. One praises God for their existence and keeps out of their way.”

The Man in the Brown Suit (Colonel Race, #1) by Agatha Christie

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This was a fun outlier in Christie’s body of work, though it is actually one of her earliest published books. She doesn’t normally do thrillers or espionage (and when she does it’s often not all that great), or feature one-off main characters, or feature a narrative that has travel and adventure in it, but this book has all of that. It’s also unfortunately one of the more dated of Christie’s works because it takes place outside that domestic sphere her other work is so comfortable […]

Melania In Paris

Our American Friend by Anna Pitoniak

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There’s been a trend these last few years of taking popular female historical characters and putting them in espionage situations. Queen Elizabeth. Jackie O. I’ve never read any of these books but I suppose there’s something to be mined from the genre. There’s really no interesting way to do the same with Melania Trump, given her complicity in her husband’s regime. So Anna Pitoniak decides to tweak just a few things (very few things) and write a story that covers both ends of the Cold War, […]

February Leftovers 2022

Trouble Is What I Do by Walter Mosley

Sleeping With Strangers by Eric Jerome Dickey

The Trees by Percival Everett

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Democracy by Carol Anderson

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These are my February leftovers, i.e. books that I read but didn’t give a full review either cuz I didn’t have time or didn’t have much to say. There are fewer than normal this month because Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. DuBois took up most of my time. Trouble Is What I Do **** Another good entry in the Leonid McGill series. It’s short and that streamlines the story more than its predecessors. I still read these as if Leonid is dead and NYC is his purgatory where […]



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