Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Women In Power

The Great Mrs. Elias by Barbara Chase-Riboud

Domina: The Women Who Made Imperial Rome by Guy de la Bédoyère

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Over the week, I read two great accountings of women in power in very different contexts. It felt natural to include them both in one review. The Great Mrs. Elias **** I knew very little about Hannah Davis going into this, which helped as it read like a page-turner. Barbara Chase-Riboud does a great job in story form of presenting Hannah’s plight and the tough choices she had to make. The dialogue could’ve used some sprucing up, but otherwise, I really enjoyed this quality work of […]

No Human Involved

The Less Dead by Denise Mina

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As I am often so critical of stories that use adoption and/or foster care as a plot device for tragedy or a reveal as to why the Big Bad is so Bad with their Badness, allow me to sing the praise of one that does adoption mostly well. At least from my point of view, which is not one of an adoptee. I’m the parent of an adoptee so it provides me some insight but, obviously, that doesn’t compare. Still, from what I do know, […]

The Sidewalks of New York

Tales of Times Square by Josh Alan Friedman

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I’ve always had this burgeoning curiosity of the old Times Square, even before seeing (and enjoying) HBO’s The Deuce. Who were the people that worked these parlors? The sex shows? The hustles? Where did they go when they were done? What are the truths and the myths surrounding the deuce? And moreover, how did one of America’s major entertainment landmarks become a red light zone of sex? Josh Friedman’s collection of story/essays covers almost all of this. I learned about the performers and the reluctance that drove […]

Hear the 20s Roar

Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age by Debby Applegate

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This is another book where you really have to be deeply invested in the subject matter to enjoy it. Fortunately, it’s right up my alley. 20s, bootlegging, gangsters, New York City. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It seems as if there was one running thread that connected gangsters like Arnold Rothstein to politicians like Jimmy Walker to entertainers like the Marx brothers to athletes like Jack Dempsey to the upper crust of Manhattan society, it was sex. Specifically the sex Polly Adler provided in her […]

Stripped

Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski

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I sat on this review for most of the day, unsure of what to make of this book. I think I’m gonna land on the side of “good” and give it a 4-star seal of approval. I think a lot of people are coming into this looking at the subplot of crime involving a stripper and assume this is a Hustler$-esque pulp tale. It’s not that at all. Instead, it’s how people’s lives revolve around a popular stripper who has gone missing, including, but not limited […]

“you girl and you boy and that’s fine with me, but what’s not fine is you selling yourself short”

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

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Jonny is an open wound: raw, glistening, spilling over, and beautiful in a way that makes you unable to turn away even though you should. It’s a wound sustained from getting too drunk at a casino and crashing through a plate glass window. It glitters, it throbs, and it is going to be expensive to clean up. He invites us into his life like a tornado introduces itself to a neighborhood. We crash through, turning everything on end at a break-neck pace. Jonny is the […]



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