Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Triple Cannonballing with Annie Wilkes. #CBRBINGO – Gateway

Misery by Stephen King

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There is some dated language and imagery in here that I don’t think King would use now (his modern books don’t ping anything for me) and that I don’t think I noticed last time, but overall this book is still great. This is the only Stephen King book (so far) that I’ve re-read. Eventually, once I finish up all his extant work (which could take me a while!) I will do a chronological re-read of all his books. That will be a project, for sure. […]

“‘The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion.’ Veteran reporter John Lawton, 68, speaking to the American Association of Broadcast Journalists in 1995.” #CBRBINGO – Machinery

Airframe by Michael Crichton

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This is the epitome of a three star read. I liked it overall, but it was very dated, and has that signature Crichton lack of character development in favor of extreme technical detail. About 200 pages from the end, though, the tension really picked up, and I did end up enjoying it. This is essentially a book about the aftermath of an airplane disaster in which there are fifty-six casualties, and three deaths. The incident comes at a very bad time for Norton Aircraft, who […]

“He can’t change his past but he means to change his future. He also intends to have his payday. He earned it.”

Billy Summers by Stephen King

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Been sitting on this review, because despite how fast I read the book, I couldn’t quite figure out how I wanted to rate it, or what I wanted to say about it. I think ultimately that I was very entertained by this book, even if it isn’t King’s best. A lot of it revisited past favorite themes of his, but some of it felt new. This is his first straight up crime novel*, and his first about a hit-man. *This honorific used to belong to […]

“We don’t live in a series of plot points. We should be thankful for that. We should realize how lucky we are.” #CBRBINGO – Home

How Lucky by Will Leitch

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I was a bit nervous for this one! We’ve got a middle-aged white guy writing from the POV of a protagonist with a pretty specific disability (SMA, a degenerative disease*) that he doesn’t share, and I wasn’t familiar with Leitch as a writer, but this was the only BOTM the month it came out that interested me, so I took a chance, and I’m glad I did! I thought the whole thing was very sensitively done, and I thought Daniel ended up being a great […]

We Thought We Knew Ye

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

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Read as part of cbr13bingo: fauna. There’s a raven on the cover. Endless Night is the rare Agatha Christie standalone and I’m finding that between this, A Pale Horse, and And Then There Were None, I’m finding that I may enjoy her standalone works more than those that feature her superstar heroes Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. (A Crooked House may be the exception to this rule. That’s one I liked a lot less than I thought I would.) I think without the need to shoehorn the large personality and abrasive, […]

Eat Up

The Dinner by Herman Koch

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: Libations.  Truthfully, this should be a “White Whale” read. I’ve been putting this one off for years and I further buried it when I wasn’t impressed with the beginning of Herman Koch’s Dear Mr. M. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have picked up a copy had I not been stuck at a bookstore with money burning a hole in my pocket and nothing else looking appealing. Sometimes, I make bad decisions regarding impulse book purchases. This is not one of those times. […]



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