Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

stories about WOMEN by WOMEN for WOMEN…have I said WOMEN enough yet?

This Telling by Cheryl Strayed

Graceful Burdens by Roxane Gay

Sweet Virginia by Caroline Kepnes

The Contractors by Lisa Ko

Halfway to Free by Emma Donogue

Bear Witness by Mary Gaitskill

Shine, Pamela! Shine! by Kate Atkinson

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I’ve been sitting on this collection for a bit, as I am struggling with articulating how I feel about the group as a whole. Each story can be (and will be) handled individually, but there is something about the overarching themes of the entire collection that has left me at a loss. This is another collection from Amazon; it was free on Kindle Unlimited, I enjoyed their last collection, and I really love Kate Atkinson. Also- I was intrigued by the title: Out of Line- Women […]

Jackson Brodie is a total d***

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

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Bingo Square: I Wish. (I thought this was set in Yorkshire but I was wrong, so it’ll have to be for the whole of the UK since I have no idea when I’ll be able to visit again.) *Wasn’t sure about adding expletives to titles but he is. I’ll get to that in a bit. One Good Turn is ostensibly a Jackson Brodie novel, and true, he is in it, but it has many other points of view so it’s often hard to see him […]

Another good outing for Atkinson

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

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This second installment in Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie detective series begins with Jackson witnessing a road rage incident at the Edinburgh festival, and from there Atkinson spins out into chapters focusing individually on Jackson and other supporting characters: Martin, a mild-mannered mystery writer; Gloria, the wife of an aging mobster; and Louise, a policewoman who keeps crossing paths with Jackson.  As with Atkinson’s other Jackson Brodie novels, the threads for all these characters eventually wind together in a satisfying way. Although I found this 2nd novel […]

A Serviceable Mystery

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

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I love a good mystery. I can tear through an absorbing mystery in a day, but I slow down for certain mysteries because of the depth of the characters.  While Case Histories moves at a decent clip, the characters are sketched with more mannerisms and exposition than depth. To her credit, though, author Kate Atkinson is quite good at portraying the many forms of grief and loss. While I did not find this mystery very satisfying in the end, I do appreciate the effort that went in […]

(not exactly) The Prime of Mr. Jackson Brodie

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

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It’s been nine years since we’ve last seen Jackson Brodie, and in those nine years a lot has changed. So much has changed that I found myself lost a few times- am I supposed to remember this? Is that name supposed to mean something? Is this kid important? Jackson seemed a bit adrift at times as well, but I suppose that was more intentional than my foggy memory. The world has changed for Jackson. His career, his family, his car, his dog- it’s all changing. […]

British Mysteries

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

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As I’ve said several times in these parts, I’m a bigger fan of the “whydunnit” than the “whodunnit.” The big reveal of the killer has never appealed much to me. I like to know what makes one person want to take the life of another. Murder is dismissed as a regular crime in fiction because of the prevalence of mystery novels but being an empathetic person, I need to have some sort of understanding as to the motivations of the players. My love of the […]



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