Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Any person you see could be capable of terrible things

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(This post originally appeared on Glorified Love Letters.) What makes Ciarán West’s books interesting is how they confirm that “page-turner” is not just a cover blurb cliché. Even when one might have other things they should be doing, they can be done after “one more chapter.” Girl Afraid centers around the kidnapping of Poppy Riley, daughter of a well-known actor, Tom, who is away filming. Poppy had been left in the care of Alice, her father’s trusted assistant, and Magda, the girl’s recently hired nanny. […]

“When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin.”

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I finished Fingersmith a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve had a hard time putting together my thoughts on it. I mean: I liked it. A lot. Sarah Waters is a new-to-me author, whose backlist I’m certainly going to be checking out, because Damn, can that lady craft a story. I have a lot of kudos to give the book, and I’m going to try to get to them all in this review. Where I’m conflicted though, is… the twisty-turny nature of the plot. Even […]

An Old Man Remembers the Blues

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It’s been a long time since I read Walter Mosley’s great Easy Rawlins mysteries, set in post-war Los Angeles.  Many years ago a friend gave me RL’s Dream, Mosley’s first foray outside the detective genre.  I tucked the book on the shelf to read later.  Almost twenty years later I found the book on the shelf last week. Curious to see what I’d missed, I plunged into the book that was described as being about the blues.   RL’s Dream is set in 1990s New […]



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