Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Knowledge wasn’t always power. Sometimes it was crippling.”

The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #11) by Louise Penny

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This wasn’t what I was expecting, but I ended up having a pleasant enough time of it. The blurb makes it seem like it’s going to be all about a serial killer, but he’s really more of a tertiary concern throughout. Mostly, this book is about the murder of Laurent Lepage, nine years old, and what his death uncovers hiding in the woods behind Three Pines. Gamache and Reine-Marie have both retired to Three Pines, and Lacoste is now the acting head of homicide, with […]

CBR12 Book Bingo – Fresh Start

Still Life by Louise Penny

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“This book is stupid,” I said to my husband as I finished the last page of Still Life and closed the book. Needless to say, I was not a fan. It was boring and weird. I honestly cannot even remember why this was in my pile of books to read. My best guess is that the library accidentally added it to my pile of check-out requests. I’m going to share the summary from the book jacket because the only thing I remember is that the murder victim is […]

Kneeling in the fragrant moist grass of the village green Clara Morrow carefully hid the Easter egg and thought about raising the dead, which she planned to do right after supper.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

My Mum is a Twat by Anoushka Warden

Bella Bella by Harvey Fierstein

Intimations by Zadie Smith

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Leviathan by Paul Auster

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Humiliated and Insulted by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Rumble Fish by SE Hinton

Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani

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The Cruelest Month – 3/5 Stars This is the third Louise Penny “Inspector Gamache” detective novel, and I think it’s a decided dip in quality from an overarching look at it. The mystery itself, quaint, small town, punctuated with poetry and art and other little considerations is perfectly interesting. At a seance, from a combination of fright and maybe poisoning, a woman is found dead. There must be an elaborate set of circumstances to come to pass to have her die, but if they were […]

“Things sometimes fell apart unexpectedly. It was not necessarily a reflection of how much they were valued.”

Kingdom of the Blind (Inspector Gamache #14) by Louise Penny

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My local library system has reopened for pick up in the past couple weeks and Kingdom of the Blind was the first of my holds from way back in March to come in (and why I’m christening this book my No Money square for bingo in celebration of all things library). I was excited to see it, I love Louise Penny’s way of crafting story but unsure how much death and destruction I was in the mood for. I decided to give American Kingpin a […]

A bit of a bummer after the high of #9.

The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #10) by Louise Penny

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Actually, I’ve slept on it, and this book makes me angry. My initial review was a little wishy-washy, because for 95% of this book, the writing is like an experimental offshoot of the normal series. There is no crime to solve; Gamache is retired. Instead, Peter has failed to come home on time after his and Clara’s separation, and Clara wants to find him, so Gamache, Beauvoir, and Myrna accompany her on an investigation road trip to basically follow in his footsteps. Only, pretty much […]

Not a bad cozy mystery

Still Life by Louise Penny

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CBR12 BINGO: No Money! I’ve noticed two trends during the pandemic that are relevant to this category: first, people seem to be taking time to declutter their homes; second, since many Goodwill stores have been closed, free stuff is often just laying about. On one of my many socially distant walks around my neighborhood, I spotted a box of mystery novels that someone was giving away. Not wanting to be greedy, I helped myself only to the first in the series, as it looked like […]



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