Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A literary mystery where the stuff on the side is more interesting than the main course.

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

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I feel like this book proves how diverse the crime/mystery genre can be in terms of style and theme, and it proves that by not really being something I loved. I love mysteries, unsolved crimes being solved, themes of racial and gender equality, historical fiction mysteries, books about writers and journalists, and stories about women breaking free of their expected gender roles. And yet, I didn’t love this, even though it features all of those things. I like my crime and mystery books either to […]

I wanted to like this one so bad!

The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams

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Mallory is a lowly intern at Swansby’s Encyclodpaedic Dictionary in present day. Her main job is to answer the phone and be berated by some anonymous troll who is upset that dictionary definitions are changing. Specifically, the definition of marriage. Tension at work is compounded by the fact that Mallory herself is gay and not out, and this troll has now called in a bomb threat. Oh, and she’s just been tasked with going through an entire encyclopedia from the 1920s and finding all of the […]

You’re never going to believe who ended up being my hero.

Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

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When I sat down to compile my best of/worst of list for 2021, Quinn’s books fell on both. I guess you will have to wait until the lists are published in a couple of weeks, but I will say that I credit the Bridgerton series with getting me out of my pandemic reading slump. They were just the page turners to yank me out of my anxiety jumbled brain. Once I dispensed with the “main” books in the series, I had to hunt down all […]

4, 4 for 4

Hawkeye, Vol. 1: My Life As A Weapon by Matt Fraction

Death Comes As The End by Agatha Christie

Country Dark by Chris Offutt

Heaven's A Lie by Wallace Stroby

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Over the weekend and into the early part of this week, I read four books. Each one merited four stars and all were good in their own unique way…   Hawkeye, Vol 1: My Life as a Weapon It’s good. I guess. No really, it’s good. All good. It’s fine. Just…it’s kind of why I don’t read a lot of comics: simplistic hero narratives with twee dialogue. I know this is what everyone wants thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’m not sure it’s what […]

YA POV of the LA riots

The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed

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And with this review of Christina Hammonds Reed’s The Black Kids, I made a bingo just under the wire. I received this for free from my Mocha Girls Read book club as it was our July sponsored book of the month. This YA historical novel is set against the backdrop of the 1992 LA riots. From the get, I was like is it really historical?! But I have to admit it has been some time since that fateful Rodney King verdict. Ashley Bennett lives in […]

Blackout. The Whale has eaten me. I repeat the Whale has eaten me and I am now dead. #CBRBINGO – White Whale

Possession by A.S. Byatt

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This review will not be long, for this book has defeated me, and in such a way that I don’t overly feel like enumerating what went wrong here. The short answer is most likely that I’m just not the right reader for this book (and this author, which is why I’ve deleted The Children’s Book from my TBR). I bought this ages ago, probably over a decade, and finally gave it a try about six years ago. I got 48 pages in before I said I’d […]



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