Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“There is nothing nice about Southern ladies!”

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

by Leave a Comment

BINGO – LIBATIONS [TW: sexual assault/rape] It’s the early 1990s, and Patricia Campbell lives in a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina with her husband, two kids, and mother-in-law. She does what she can to be a picturesque Southern lady: exceptional manners and hospitality, exquisite outfits, pristine home, and exemplary family. She is a perfect Southern peach, and she’s bored. The only outlet she has that is solely for herself is her book club filled with other women just like her. To escape their lives, they […]

John Slattery as an AI

The Municipalists: A Novel by Seth Fried

by Leave a Comment

This book sort of defies classification. It feels a bit like an odd couple buddy cop movie, a social satire, a sci-fi adventure, and more. It’s an enjoyable ride without a clear identity, but maybe that’s part of the fun of it. Suitland, Maryland, is the home to the United States Municipal Survey. This straight-laced federal agency is charged with helping American cities reach their full potential by making their processes more effective and efficient. The protagonist is a suit named Henry. Even at the […]

Extra Reading

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

Players by Don DeLillo

A Stained White Radiance by James Lee Burke

Louise Hathcock: Queen of the State Line Mob by Robert Broughton

Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark

by Leave a Comment

I’m trying to document all of the books I read on here to better hit my cannonball numbers. These are ones I’ve been meaning to upload into combined reviews but haven’t. Some are good, some are eh, but most of them just didn’t merit a lot of words from me at the time I finished them for various reasons. Who Is Maud Dixon? *** For a similar identity-based thriller I read last year, a reviewer derisively pegged it as The Talented Mr. Rip-off. I didn’t […]

Tragic: Worst Person You Know Makes a Good Point

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

by 3 Comments

TW: mentions of rape, violent murder Welp, I guess the fourth time is a charm. Brett Easton Ellis’ thing is never going to be my thing. Vomiting brand names, writing with a mix of flatness and kinetic energy, satirizing culture to the point where there’s no line. Glamorama was trash and the rest of his works have never done much for me. However, I’ve read a lot lately about New York City in the 80s and what Wall Street was like in that time. I also read […]

This Could Have Been SO Good

One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London

by Leave a Comment

So the book blurb reads like this: Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers—and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for […]

The Bit Character Speaks

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

by Leave a Comment

I’d say this is a 3.5 star book that I’m rounding up! I really enjoyed the whole conceit, but similar to how I think people viewed the Seinfeld finale, the final step of said conceit veered a bit off for my enjoyment. This is a very meta book, where our main character (Asian Man) is both a person and a background character in a by-the-numbers police procedural, whose filming itself veers between scripted TV and improved real life(?). It’s satire and yet very grounded in […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo