Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Kim was starlight and privilege; Will had his feet firmly fixed in the mud. They didn’t belong together. Except they did.”

Subtle Blood by K.J. Charles

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CBR14 Bingo: Scandal (the book features corruption, blackmail, kidnapping, and murder – not to mention gay people in the 1920s. Gasp!) Spoiler warning! This is the third book in a trilogy. While you can absolutely read this book without the others, you will not get all the beautiful payoff from various earlier storylines that way. Also, this review will contain mild spoilers for earlier in the series. Start with Slippery Creatures. For the last few months, Lord Arthur “Kim” Secretan and Will Darling have actually […]

“I don’t think I’ll have anywhere left to hide my excuses and these bright, urgent feelings once his gentle light illuminates each of my dark corners.”

Scandalized by Ivy Owens

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Last month I read Dome’Loki’s review of Scandalized and immediately requested it from my library, which meant I joined a several week long queue. As promised in the review, this story pulls you in immediately. When it finally got to me it took me less than 36 hours to read it (I almost finished it in less than 12, but at 75% I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and I was required to go to work on Monday – nonsense I tell […]

One Bad Day

Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland

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Cbr14bingo Scandal/bingo  Published in 1988 generated controversy for its violence, treatment of Barbara Gordon, Moore’s later criticism of his own. See this story in the Guardian. Batman: The Killing Joke, published in 1988, has had enormous influence on Batman movies and seems to be the generally accepted version of the Joker’s origin story. While I haven’t seen all of the Batman movies, as I read this graphic novel, I recognized that Hollywood has largely adopted Alan Moore’s story as canon. Moore himself in subsequent years […]

Quick breezy thriller

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

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Hannah is a newly married thirty-something year old, still smitten with her husband Owen, and largely loving their life in the Sam Francisco Bay Area. They live on a houseboat in Sausalito and she spends her days making hand turned custom wooden furniture while Owen works for an up and coming tech start up in the city where he is the right hand to the CEO. The only friction is between Hannah and Bailey, Owen’s daughter from a previous marriage, who has yet to warm […]

They’re Out!

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof

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Read as part of CBR14Bingo: Scandal. The 1919 World Series was scandalized by eight members of the Chicago White Sox agreeing to throw it as part of a gambling conspiracy.  Bill James is a legend among baseball fans. His greatest rep is as the Analytics Guy but my first taste of his work was his text on the Hall of Fame, in which he critiques the process by which people enter. James devoted a chapter to baseball’s most famous banned people: Pete Rose and Shoeless […]

“You ever see somebody ruin their own life?/ His poor wife.”

The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father's Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism by Bill Shaffer

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CBR 14 Bingo: Scandal The yellow papers screamed scandalous headlines in this case of stabbings, baby trafficking, and mysterious deaths. When Ray Hamilton’s wife is arrested for stabbing the family’s wet nurse, a great deal of scandalous truth comes out – namely, that the child is not his, nor hers. I have not seen that seminal musical Hamilton, but I had read the doorstopper of a book it was based on. While I knew all about the successes and scandals of Alexander Hamilton’s life, I had […]



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