Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Too Much of a Good Thing?

I, Lucifer by Peter O'Donnell

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Out of all the Modesty Blaise books, I, Lucifer is my least favorite, and I can’t pin down exactly why. It might be my Victorian prudishness dealing with the adventure having three of her lovers in one story. She’s always been nonchalant about her partners, leaving them friends when she departs, but two of the three aren’t quite so easy-going as she is, and she has to remind them of who owns her body and who decides what she does with it. We have the […]

Don’t Go West

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by James D. Bradley

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Like a lot of Americans, I learned the broad strokes about the Pacific theater in World War II. The Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Attacked us! Obviously, we couldn’t just stand pat. So we warred with them from island-to-island until we had no choice but to drop the atomic bomb and end the war. They were the aggressor and it was all their fault. I’m reluctant to call this narrative propaganda. Japan did attack us. But the history of the war in the Pacific […]

Soldier For Fortune

Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler and the Making and Breaking of the American Empire by Jonathan M. Katz

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An excellent read and an infuriating read. Worth all five stars. And like Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction and Ackerman’s Reign of Terror, you’re guaranteed to be peeved on every page. I knew the United States had a colonizing history dating back, well really to its foundation through the US-Mexican War of the 1840s, but more specifically from the end of the 19th century onwards. I knew that we captured many islands in the Caribbean and Pacific respectively, even if I didn’t know the hows-and-whys. Jonathan M. Katz does […]

A Hopeful Romance with Community and So Much Good Food

A Match Made in Lipa by Carla de Guzman

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I had to stop reading this a few times to soothe my aching chest. There is an undercurrent of melancholy in Carla de Guzman’s A Match Made in Lipa that gives depth to the sweet and hopeful childhood friends to lovers romance. Kira and Santi played together as children in Lipa until Santi’s grandfather demanded the family move to Manila. Years later, Santi is wandering through Osaka, having just been fired from the family hotel business and cut off from all family money. He runs into […]

We Need Ross Thomas For These Times

Out on the Rim by Ross Thomas

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Headline really says it all but I suppose I need to explain why. I watched Vice today and it had to be one of the most bleak, cynical movies I’ve ever seen. It was excellent. And it reminded me of why I need Ross Thomas novels in my life, anytime really but especially now…to ward off the creeping nihilism that comes from American politics. Thomas is a cynic too but he doesn’t let that get in the way of entertainment. His books are fun and none perhaps […]



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