Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Circle Is Complete

The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder by Lawrence Block

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Read as part of CBR15Bingo: nostalgia. This is the final book of a favorite series and it takes me back to when I began the series, as well as taking me back to a New York City that no longer exists. Fifteen years ago (fifteen!), I passed a rainy afternoon while on internship to read a Matthew Scudder book by Lawrence Block. I didn’t know it was the second in a long-running series; I had just grabbed it off a cart. It was fine. I […]

The Lovely Bones Redux

Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz

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The paths of two strangers, Alice and Ruby, cross when Ruby discovers Alice’s body by the Hudson River and gets sucked into the mystery of her life and death. I am an avid consumer of true crime content, especially podcasts, though what I enjoy them about them I am not quite sure I know. The shocking and sometimes absurd human drama? The reassuring fear that some people watch horror movies for? The emergence of heroes and the satisfaction of the perpetrators ultimately being put away? […]

A Very Sad True Crime Book

Golden Boy: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite by John Glatt

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I picked this up because it intersected with my interests in NYC, mental illness, and true crime, and I’d been considering getting it for a while before my mom agreed to buy it for me on vacation (she’s a great mom!). Honestly, if I’d bought this myself I don’t know if I’d have been that happy with my decision because this book was perfectly fine but nothing exceptional. It was only $10 but it’s always easier when it’s not your $10. Golden Boy follows the […]

April 2023 Leftovers

Lady Boss by Jackie Collins

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Flux by Jinwoo Choo

The Cutie by Donald Westlake

The Boy with the Faster Brain by Peter Shankman

The Widening Gyre by Robert B. Parker

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Happy spring! Lady Boss** So after two books and almost 2k pages of enough internalized misogyny to make Phyllis Schlafly blush, with stories chock full of men and women who will literally hump anyone and anything, Jackie Collins suddenly decides to make Lucky purchase a movie studio…in order to get rid of casting couches and male dominance in favor of female-driven movies that are less horny. What? Whatever. I’ll still keep reading this garbage. The Hunting Party*** I was prepared to write about this being […]

Oh, you mean the GANGS of New York

Rogues' Gallery by John Oller

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I was jonesing for a New York City gangster tale last week. I finally started Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York but quit when I realize that the book is less glorious embellishment and more fan fiction. Frustrated, I looked for a substitute and then remembered I purchased John Oller’s Rogues’ Gallery on a lark. It aspires to be a corrective to Asbury’s highly fictionalized accounting which was held as a historical standard for years. Oller is more scholarly than smooth but this might scratch the itch if you’re […]

You Don’t Always Get What You Want

On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks

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Alas, this was not the Green Dolphin I was looking for.  There is a jazz standard by this name that I love, and I know it was featured in a movie, based on a novel of the same name.  Well, almost the same name.  What I was looking for was Green Dolphin Street, based on an historical novel set in New Zealand.  So imagine my surprise when I pick up the book I had ordered from the library, and see the cover featuring a mid-century […]



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