Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

All My Life Is Changing Every Day…

Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks

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Read as part of CBR17Bingo: reread. I’m replacing the reread square with a free one here because I enjoyed this book, wanted to write about it and it doesn’t fit neatly into another category. When I was a kid, we didn’t have those conflabbed Hunger Games and young adult fantasy trilogies. We had Goosebumps and Babysitters Club and Matthew Christopher. We had real books, ones that were short and easy to digest, ones that didn’t touch on heavier themes beyond Being a kid sucks. This book […]

Oh no, they (almost) killed David!

The Discovery by K. A. Applegate

The Threat by K. A. Applegate

The Solution by K. A. Applegate

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The Animorphs created a psychopath then abandoned him on an island of rats. Yes, I just finished Animorphs books 20 thru 22, the David Trilogy. See, the Animorphs meet a new kid named David (who, in my headcast, is tween Mark-Paul Gosselaar). This new kid is playing with a familiar blue cube – the very Andalite cube that gave the Animorphs their morphing powers! They attempt a stealth mission at David’s house to get the cube back, fearful the Yeerks will get their hands on […]

To Vigil the Ante

Even the Wicked by Lawrence Block

Revelation by CJ Sansom

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Just as with Trump’s election last month dovetailing into subjects I read, the recent shooting death of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson by a vigilante killer coincided with me reading two consecutive books on vigilante justice. Going to review both vis-a-vis how they speak to the moment. Even the Wicked Growing up, vigilante justice was always right wing coded. Dirty Harry. Death Wish. I still remember the popular “Beer For My Horses” song in which Willie Nelson and Toby Keith talk about public hangings and “putting […]

Do You Guys Ever Think About Death?

A Long Line of Dead Men by Lawrence Block

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I usually don’t take a long post for my Scudder re-reads as most are summarized compared to what I originally wrote about them. But I wanted some extra space to explore this one. I’ve noticed that post-Eight Million Ways to Die, Lawrence Block’s Scudder plots have become weaker. That’s fine with me; Block’s not bad at plotting but it’s not his strong suit and I’ve come to see these more as hang out novels than Christie-type whodunnits. So I wasn’t looking forward to this one […]

C I Yikes

Libra by Don DeLillo

Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer

The Ghost by Robert Harris

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Recently, I read three different books featuring CIA chicanery (two were fictional). This was unintentional but I figured since the themes were similar, I’d just batch review them rather than do individual ones. Libra***** This was a re-read. I liked it the first time. I loved it now that I: a. had a better since of the Oswald timeline after reading Posner’s Case Closed and b. could appreciate the meta-narrative structure in a way I couldn’t before. This is the only DeLillo book I can really […]

“No one had warned her it would be like this. Love was supposed to feel good. Wasn’t it? Not terrifying. Perhaps this wasn’t love after all, but malaria.”

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

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Last month when I was reading What I Did for a Duke I kept waiting for a particular scene to happen, and it never did. That is because I had superimposed the bathtub scene from Do You Want to Start a Scandal onto that book, which was all the excuse I needed to read it as well. Like with What I Did for a Duke this one is a reread of a book I only read a couple years ago. It deliciously fits into what […]



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