Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Those Words You Want to Say Right Now? Don’t Say Them.”

City of Thieves by David Benioff

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Because I’m always a billion years behind popular culture, I had no idea that the David Benioff of the Game of Thrones TV show was also an author. And a good one! In applying for a freelance job that wanted an analytical summary of the first three chapters of City of Thieves, I was hooked and had to read the whole thing. I didn’t get the job, but I really enjoyed the novel. City of Thieves is a historical fiction surrounding the siege and starvation of […]

“By the smallest of actions one can restore some order in the world.”

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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This was an audiobook listen for me, narrated by the wonderful Nicholas Guy Smith. It was also something of a journey. It took me most of 2020 and a month of 2021 to finish this fine novel. It took me so long not because it was a chore to listen, but precisely because it was  a great story. It takes time to make sense of those. It was a great read for last year because of both plot and theme. The plot’s connection to 2020 […]

It’s a real life spy thriller! (And it’s really good!)

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre

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Oh boy, do I love a good espionage thriller. So, continuing with my “what’s free and available” method of choosing books, I picked up my father’s copy of Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. This is the true story of a high-ranking KGB official who defected to MI6 during the deepest freeze of the Cold War. (KGB is Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti for anyone who plays trivia – it seems like a formidable bonus question). Macintyre interviews […]

In Putin’s Russia, Donald Trumps YOU!

House of Trump, House of Putin by Craig Unger

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First of all, much love to this book for having a clever cover. Donald Trump and the Putin nesting dolls…it gave me a laugh every time I looked at it, especially the Putin face sticking out of an oversized body. Second, and more important…this book should have been much better than it was given the subject. I’ve explored some of the connections between the Russian organized crime unit and Donald Trump. I was anticipating this book would make those links more clear. Instead, it’s basically […]

Brexiteers

Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carré

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In a world of constant change and rising menace, it’s good to know that John Le Carré still has it. This won’t go down as one of his great works but it’s still a pretty sharp take on the western world post-Brexit/Trump through the eyes of a disaffected anti-Russia SIS operative who has been mothballed for most of the last two decades while Britain and her American ally swung their swords in the middle east. With Vladimir Putin leading the digital charge to break up […]

More Vacation Reading

Black Edge: Insider Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar

Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Attack on the West by Luke Harding

Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8? by Ethan Brown

The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep by Lawrence Block

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I was on vacation last week (with all the requisite social distancing procedures) and I did a lot of vacation reading. I’m not sure why but lately I’ve been on a non-fiction kick, thus, three out of the four books I read were non-fic. Fortunately for me, everything I read was at least good and all merited the coveted 4-stars. Black Edge I became interested in this story when I learned that Steve Cohen and Preet Bharara’s relationship was the basis for the hit Showtime […]



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