Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This has got to be the most misleading title ever

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Today is June 30th and the end of Pride month. How very fitting that I finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo today. This book is queer as hell, and I had no idea going in. I just knew that I loved Daisy Jones and the Six by Reid, and this book came highly praised by friends and Cannonballers alike. I loved nearly every moment of it. This book is told through two main points of view, that of Evelyn Hugo and that of her biographer Monique Grant. […]

out of the way, Mr. Hughes. Let the real stars shine.

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth

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You’ve seen The Aviator, yes? If not, maybe you know that it’s about Howard Hughes? Yes- the Spruce Goose guy. Yes, the keep on failing upwards guy. Yes, the “keep your pee in jars” guy. We’ve all heard or seen at least a little bit about Howard Hughes. His reach was wide and heavy, and he swept away businesses, careers, and entire studios in his wake. Karina Longworth, author of Seduction and podcaster extraordinaire, covered Howard Hughes’s Hollywood during a whole season of her phenomenal podcast a […]

Kindle enthusiasm

Once Is Not Enough by Jaqueline Susann

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This pandemic has made everything hard, including reading. Something that I love to do, but somehow didn’t want to concentrate that hard to do … until I got a Kindle. This is not an ad. But the times we are living in have encouraged a few bigger-than usual purchases. Since I haven’t been spending my money elsewhere (or anywhere), one of those purchases was a Kindle. It has seemed easier for me to read some titles on this device for a few reasons. First, I […]

The Gentleman Gangster

Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin by Lee Server

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Ever since I read Don Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine last year, I’ve been obsessed with SoCal mobster tales. Martin Scorsese came close to adapting Frankie Machine before he was seduced by Charles Brandt’s inferior I Heard You Paint Houses, which he turned into The Irishman. If Scorsese had wanted to do a lion-in-winter mafia tale, I wish he had done Frankie or a movie on Rosselli’s life. Both of which are more interesting than another northeastern gangster story. Lee Server is an expert on pop history, with bios of Ava Gardner and […]

Reading, Reading, Reading

Broken Places by Tracy Clark

The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie

Solos by Kitty Burns Florey

The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton

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Finishing off the year right with another round of great crime fiction… Broken Places 4 stars A really good debut novel that’s pure Chicago without being annoying. A little predictable towards the end but well-written nonetheless. Also, much love for featuring black Roman Catholicism, which is a different expression than the commonly mass produced (re:white) Roman Catholicism of crime novels and movies.   The A.B.C. Murders 4 stars This one was about to highlight why I’m not a big Christie fan, despite usually enjoying her novels. Whereas […]

cbr12bingo – Happy!

Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms by John Hodgman

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“Hey, it’s John Hodgman!” John Hodgman used to spend a considerable amount of time on TV. He’s played, in his words, all sorts of “sexless weirds” in TV and commercials alike. He spent time on The Daily Show as, among other things, a deranged billionaire. He left his Daily Show role behind as Trump rose to power, as there is nothing funny anymore about criminally insane rich people.  He isn’t spending too much time on TV at the moment; it’s been years since he was the PC of […]



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