Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Fear in the Borough

Brooklyn Noir by ed. Tim McLoughlin

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This is the OG of the Akashic noir series, a series I greatly enjoy, being both a city lover and a fan of mystery/noir tales. I don’t always like short stories. I enjoy a book that I can really sink my teeth into, a plot that grips me, an argument to be made in non-fiction. These are usually my exception to the rule. I used to make fun of Brooklyn a lot. It’s become synonymous with gentrification, upper-middle and upper-class whites inhabiting working class neighborhoods, […]

Second chance, age gap romance – with a cat!

Acting Lessons by Adele Buck

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I’ve been curious about Freddie and James ever since Cath’s book (Acting Up), but there’s good reasons why this wasn’t the immediate sequel. This is a delightful second chance romance and well worth the wait. While I think you could read this as a standalone, it’s much more fun to have at least read the first book in the series. Two years ago, Freddie and James met on the set of a play while Freddie was an assistant stage manager and James, a screen actor, was […]

Annual Short Story Collection Round-up

New York Fantastic: Fantasy Stories from the City that Never Sleeps by Paula Guran & Others

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Because I’d never ask my students to do something I wouldn’t do, and also because NK Jemisin highly suggests reading short stories to get better at writing long stories, I try to read a short story collection every year. For whatever reason, no matter how good the writing is, short story collections take me EONS to finish, and New York Fantastic was no exception. With twenty stories by different speculative authors, New York Fantastic offers a wide variety of story types and a nice selection of award […]

Library Bingo

The Dark Tunnel by Ross Macdonald

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Billy Summers by Stephen King

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

A Darkness More Than Night by Michael Connelly

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I haven’t been able to keep up with the Cannonball Read Bingo, but I have been reading stuff for my library’s bingo, which helps because it encourages me to try things I’d either put off or left on my shelf to rot…   The Dark Tunnel ** Went back to the beginning with Ross Macdonald for this one. I love Ross’ Archer series and his standalones aren’t bad but this one is. Unfocused plotting, expository dialogue, characters conveniently bouncing in and out. Macdonald was trying […]

I keep my heart safely between the pages of this book…

Overseas by Beatriz Williams

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Kate Wilson thinks her life is pretty normal. She just wants to finish her internship at Sterling Bates so she can head off to business school and become a commodities trader in her own right. Enter Julian Lawrence—Sterling Bates client and mysterious billionaire hedgie. Despite a rocky beginning, Julian can’t seem to get enough of Kate. He’s using the L word before they’ve even had their first date. Suddenly her life is anything but normal. The world slides sideways—Kate is fired for alleged insider trading, […]

Lightning Round

Tonguebreaker by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Batman Earth One, Vol. 3 by Geoff Johns

Solomon's Vineyard by Jonathan Latimer

Antartica: Journeys to the South Pole by Walter Dean Myers

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

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A few reviews of shorter books that I read quickly over the weekend and didn’t have extra time to flesh out… Tonguebreaker ***** Coming to terms with a society that doesn’t want you based on your body…and creating your own space instead…has to be a challenging thing. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha bares her soul to the world in this collection of poems and one-act plays. Her use of language to lecture gripped me and her exploration of what it means to live in this world, to […]



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