Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

In which I non-review a favorite book.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) by Stieg Larsson

by 2 Comments

Not quite sure what I want to say this go-round. I hate reviewing favorite books. There’s something about the headspace you get in when you’re reading one. It’s just so passive and full of unthinking pleasure. I just let books happen to me when I’m like that. And I don’t want to talk about it okay! It’s private. I loved this book back when I first read it, and then again when I re-read it a couple years later, and now I love it again […]

A trip to the Moor is a trip to Dullsville, unfortunately.

The Moor (Mary Russell, #4) by Laurie R. King

by Leave a Comment

Three stars is a combo of me not being in the mood and forcing it, and the book being not as good as I wanted it to be. (six months later as I go to actually write this review) No, I’m not even going to make excuses for this. It was very dull! The setting was dull. The mystery was dull. The interactions between Holmes and Mary were dull. Holmes was dull! And the resolution of the mystery did nothing for me. Returning to the […]

The Past Is Not Through With Us

Shadow of a Tiger by Dennis Lynds (Michael Collins)

by Leave a Comment

The influence of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer series is what originally drove me to this series. Dan Fortune can kind of be seen as Archer’s east coast counterpart, only he’s missing an arm and we know more about his personal life. In this one, Dennis Lynds (writing under the nom de plume “Michael Collins”) treads familiar territory for both he and his influencer: exploring the dirty deeds of a family. A recurring theme in many of these stories is the past often catches up to us. […]

She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion.

Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

by 4 Comments

Nope. I think that I can now honestly say that I am not a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Give me all of the re-tellings, please, but spare me the prototype. I tried. I really, really tried. I should not have to try so hard. While I did appreciate A Study in Scarlet, the terrible (and worst book of the year for me) The Sign of Four took way too much time out of my life that I will never get back. Sadly, I am afraid that this gothic […]

Dad Energy

A Ticket to the Boneyard by Lawrence Block

by Leave a Comment

I try hard to avoid books that are marketed specifically for older white guys. You know the type because they’re everywhere: lone wolf alpha male, usually with some military or police background, goes on the prowl in a specific terrain to vanquish the bad guy in defense of someone, most commonly a woman. Basically, they’re westerns with different topographies. While I’ve occasionally enjoyed the works of authors such as Lee Child, these books really aren’t my thing. Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series fits the mold […]

Book to Film: The Talented Mr. Ripley

by Leave a Comment

Patricia Highsmith wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley in in 1955. She based it loosely on Henry James’s The Ambassadors (which I now have to add to my to-read list). The lead character, Tom Ripley, proved so popular, that she brought him back for four more novels. When the reader first meets Tom he is living close to the bone in New York City, subsisting on his “friends,” or running various schemes, including mail fraud. But Tom isn’t really great at his schemes, and he doesn’t like […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo