Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To Vigil the Ante

Even the Wicked by Lawrence Block

Revelation by CJ Sansom

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Just as with Trump’s election last month dovetailing into subjects I read, the recent shooting death of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson by a vigilante killer coincided with me reading two consecutive books on vigilante justice. Going to review both vis-a-vis how they speak to the moment. Even the Wicked Growing up, vigilante justice was always right wing coded. Dirty Harry. Death Wish. I still remember the popular “Beer For My Horses” song in which Willie Nelson and Toby Keith talk about public hangings and “putting […]

Fruit of a Rotted Tree

Sovereign by CJ Sansom

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Anyone who’s read my reviews knows how much I love reading about the Plantagenets and the Wars of the Roses in general. So when I got to book three in the Shardlake series, I had high hopes for it and it surely did not disappoint. But I have to start with something that nags: I’m not a fan of Shardlake himself. True he cannot help his physical condition and the way people treat him is terrible. But the way he treats everyone else is…also not […]

Early Fall Leftovers

To Start A War: How the Bush Administration Took Us Into Iraq by Robert Draper

The Travelers by Chris Pavone

A Walk Among the Tombstones by Lawrence Block

Dark Fire by CJ Sansom

The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation by Robert Rand

Stasi Child by David Young

The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block

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I’ve read some interesting stuff lately and I wish I had made more time to document it but life gets in the way that life sometimes does. Not all bad, just life. To Start A War**** I had a long thing here about connecting this to the 2024 election but I don’t want to talk current electoral politics on here, at least the specifics of them. A good book if you want to know the intelligence (ha) perspective of how we wound up in a […]

Rolling Heads

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel

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What you must never forget about this one is that you’re still in Wolf Hall. That’s trite, I know! But I can’t think of what else to say because as I reoriented my perspective on reading this, its power really hit me. I read Wolf Hall five years ago, at a different period in my life and thought it was just ok. Appreciated what it was doing but I didn’t have the focus to engage with it like I should have. Time and age tend to confer […]

who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel

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Yes, I know that Hamilton and Tudor England are not the same thing, but we all know that history is decided by the survivors. Who won? Whoever died last. Who was paid, how much was spent, who wielded the most glorious or secret power, who promised what to where- it does not matter. Thomas Cromwell, in the moment at least, lost. He was *centuries old spoiler alert* beheaded, and spent the last several hundred years painted as a scoundrel and a cheat. Many called him a […]

So Now Get Up

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

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Oh, Wolf Hall. So many great and beautiful moments. So many frustrating, stagnating moments. So easy to appreciate. So impossible to judge. Hilary Mantel writes dialogue with a breezy yet deep style. Her characters say a lot by saying so little. If I’m being too paradoxical, it’s because this is a book comfortable with paradox: the lowborn rising to high positions in Tudor England. It’s a stirring tale of politics and a cautionary one about the price of true reform. Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell is comfortable operating in […]



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