Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Doin’ No Harm

Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak

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Read as part of CBR15bingo: edibles. The plot centers around a large shipment of marijuana, which I guess is technically edible though you can use it in things that are actually edible. Admittedly, I’m reaching here but the suggestion on the OP did include “drugs.” Hixploitation (the author’s words, not mine) — like blaxploitation and other specified identity genres — hit a frenzied peak in the 70s. It was the era of the Film Brats and just as they influenced studio Hollywood, the Bs were […]

May-July Leftovers

There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History by Rory Carroll

City of Dreams by Don Winslow

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Tripwire by Jack Reacher

Baby Moll by John Farris

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle

The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

X by Davey Davis

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship by Harvey Araton

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen

The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Ex Machina Book Four by Brian K. Vaughan

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite

Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell

The Crust on Its Uppers by Derek Raymond

That Kind of Danger by Donna Masini

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Spenser Confidential by Ace Atkins

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Weyward by Emilia Hart

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel by Ellen Raskin

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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I usually do these at the end of the month but then I went through a big reading slump March-May. And then I roared back but realized I was behind. So apologies for this being so long. There Will Be Fire **** A good, readable text on a moment in history I knew little about. Even after reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, I still had a lot of problem keeping track of all the socio-political dynamics so it’s good that Rory Carroll makes it accessible […]

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 […]

March 2023 Leftovers

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Cammalleri

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Tina, Mafia Soldier by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli

The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder by Susan Wels

Every Man a King by Walter Mosley

The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates

Robert B. Parker's Lullaby by Ace Atkins

The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

Play the Fool by Lina Chern

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Man, that month went fast The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion**** I might have a lot more to say about this one had I finished it weeks ago but I’ll be honest, I’m starting to hit my limit on books about tech geniuses that the public discovers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be only after they’re handed billions of dollars. Theranos, Uber and now WeWork all run by self-glorifying con artists. This book is as well done as the […]

February 2023 Leftovers

Dead Wind by Tessa Wegert

One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus

Messi vs. Ronaldo: One Rivalry, Two Goats, and the Era That Remade the World's Game by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz

The Title: The Story of the First Division by Scott Murray

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

The Fiancée by Kate White

The Guns of Heaven by Pete Hamill

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Hey on the last day of the month, it finally snowed in New York! Huzzah! Dead Wind**** I can’t talk about why I like this book without even the mildest of spoilers if you’ve been following the series. So I’ll talk about what I appreciate. I’ve been in an on-and-off reading slump the last two months. It’s been hard to finish stuff. Tessa Wegert’s Shana Merchant series really feels like the exception to the rule. I like her writing, her pacing, her protagonist. All good. One […]

January 2023 Leftovers

Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly

Queen of Thieves by Beezy Marsh

Anxious People by Frederick Backman

The Dead Season by Tessa Wegert

A Diet of Treacle by Lawrence Block

The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports by Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg

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Here are brief reviews for the books I read in 2023 that I either didn’t have time to review or that didn’t merit 250 words… Two Kinds of Truth*** First new read of 2023! I continue to plow through the Bosch series. I enjoyed most of what I read recently but this was just blah. Boring, predictable dueling plots, though one is resolved with an interesting twist. Read better, read worse in this series. Looking forward to getting to some of the Renee Ballard books. […]



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