Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An earlier novel by a favorite author

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel

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CBR15 BINGO – Relation”Ship”, for the relationships between four high school friends and their families, both known and unknown I suspect I’m like most readers in that I first encountered Emily St. John Mandel when I read her brilliant and heart-aching Station Eleven. Since then, I’ve eagerly awaited her new novels and, having caught up on those, I finally turned to her earlier works. The Lola Quartet, published two years before Station Eleven, is the story of a group of high school friends in Florida who […]

Sometimes fun, sometimes really dark

Sign Here by Claudia Lux

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From the first couple of chapters of Sign Here, I thought I was in for a fun romp along the lines of a Christopher Moore-esque adventure. The premise certainly lends itself to such silliness: In Hell, a “deals maker” (not an actual demon, but a human who died and ended up there for reasons we’ll eventually learn) named Peyote Trip (everybody in Hell is given ridiculous names) contends with the day-to-day annoyances of existence in the underworld. The Deals Department is on the fifth floor, […]

The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

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Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s powerful, 1962 non-fiction book documenting the damage caused by widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides, has been on my TBR for a long time. I considered it something I simply had to read if I was going to continue to claim to be a science lover and environmentalist. I thought this would mostly be review for me since I’m already aware of the harm that DDT has caused. For one thing, I’m involved with an organization that supports conservation efforts around […]

Murder of the Week

A Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

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I was a touch disappointed in Anthony Horowitz’s last Hawthorne mystery, so I started The Twist of a Knife with my expectations tempered. I love Horowitz’s two Atticus Pünd novels (Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders), and I suspect I’ve been judging the Hawthorne series a little too harshly because of that. I still enjoy them, though, for what they are: light-hearted, fun mysteries that read like episodes of your favorite murder-of-the-week television series. The Twist of the Knife is an entertaining installment. When the novel […]

The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

The Overstory by Richard Powers

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The Overstory is the type of novel I dread reviewing. At nearly 500 pages,  nine protagonists, and scores of literary and cultural references, there’s so much to unpack that a review could easily become a doctoral thesis if one had the time and inclination. To properly review, I would almost have to start over and take extensive notes as I read, planting even more stickies on all the pages that contain something interesting or pivotal. Reading this book was both exhausting and exhilarating. The novel is […]

I just want to find Arthur Less and give him a big hug

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

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When I received a copy of Less is Lost, the follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel I so enjoyed in 2018, I wanted to start reading immediately. But I also wanted  to reread Less, to see whether it would still delight me as much as I remembered. I summoned some self-control and started at the beginning, and I’m so glad I did. Less is the story of Arthur Less, a middling author who, to avoid RSVPing to the wedding of his former lover of nine […]



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