New York City – Page 16 – Cannonball Read 17

Pay the Players

The City Game: Triumph, Scandal and a Legendary Basketball Team by Matthew Goodman

April 7, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

March Madness concluded last week. I can legally say that I had some financial skin in the game (which sadly didn’t pay off). I also enjoyed the games on the March Madness app, brought to me by whatever sponsor the NCAA is using these days. Oh yeah, and the players got zero dollars. Zero. Big time college sports has always been a con where self-righteous (mostly) white men bleat about scholarships and academia while collecting money hand-over-fist off unpaid labor. There’s truth to what legendary […]

The Lynx Knows

Secret Identity: A Novel by Alex Segura

April 3, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

I waited for this book for months. Months! And for the most part, it was worth the wait. It’s very good. I’ve read other stuff from Alex Segura, from his Pete Fernandez mystery books to the first edition of his Black Ghost graphic novel series. I love his interest in how journalism, urban corruption, and dogged investigative work come together to tell an entertaining tale. It’s right up my alley. This ambitious novel set in the comic industry in 1970s New York City could fall flat for trying to […]

Hear the 20s Roar

Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age by Debby Applegate

March 21, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

This is another book where you really have to be deeply invested in the subject matter to enjoy it. Fortunately, it’s right up my alley. 20s, bootlegging, gangsters, New York City. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It seems as if there was one running thread that connected gangsters like Arnold Rothstein to politicians like Jimmy Walker to entertainers like the Marx brothers to athletes like Jack Dempsey to the upper crust of Manhattan society, it was sex. Specifically the sex Polly Adler provided in her […]

Connection is Made

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

March 11, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

In an ideal world, this would be the first of a 10-book series. There’s certainly room here for at least one sequel and more. Which doesn’t mean Jane Pek needs to do this. Series eventually run out of steam as one can only recycle the same characters and plots for so long. But I really loved this writer’s style, her protagonist, and the way she uses New York City. But it’s not just that this was written by a city-dwelling millennial who loves mysteries (as Jane Pek […]

February Leftovers 2022

Trouble Is What I Do by Walter Mosley

Sleeping With Strangers by Eric Jerome Dickey

The Trees by Percival Everett

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Democracy by Carol Anderson

March 3, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

These are my February leftovers, i.e. books that I read but didn’t give a full review either cuz I didn’t have time or didn’t have much to say. There are fewer than normal this month because Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. DuBois took up most of my time. Trouble Is What I Do **** Another good entry in the Leonid McGill series. It’s short and that streamlines the story more than its predecessors. I still read these as if Leonid is dead and NYC is his purgatory where […]

Magic City, Magic Boroughs

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

February 12, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

If you love New York City, as I do, you’ll love this book as much as I did (my favorite read of 2022 so far by far). Let’s just start there. Like author N.K. Jemisin, I’m an NYC transplant, even if she had more experience visiting it in her youth than I did. Like her, I came with an understanding and expectation of what I thought the city was and was going to be for me. And, according to the afterword, I learned and changed […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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