Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A person is a person through other people.”

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur

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Very entertaining, and very educational! And for those of you who haven’t yet watched The Good Place, I recommend that you stop reading this review and just go watch that show instead. It would be a much better way to spend your time. This is relevant because Mike Schur, the author of How to Be Perfect, is the creator of The Good Place, and this is a book he wrote because of his experience on that show. It is NOT a behind the scenes book at all, so […]

“Imagine if all men took women seriously.”

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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Enjoyed every bit of this. I’m at that time of year when I’m SO many reviews behind, and I’m reading a lot of good books that I just don’t feel like articulating about (I’m about to Review Amnesty a crap ton of books), but this book was such a good read for me, I do want to say a little something about it. No idea what that something is about to be; stream of consciousness is always a surprising and fun way to write reviews. […]

The Night Stalker … In Print

The Kolchak Papers: The Original Novels by Jeff Rice

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I like to find the original literary sources for movies that I like (see past reviews of Strangers on a Train, Rosemary’s Baby, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), so I was happy to find out that an old television show from my childhood, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, actually started life out as a book. The Kolchak Papers: The Original Novels includes the first two novels that introduced intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak, who has a flair for detecting the supernatural. They first debuted in 1970 and are now […]

“That’s the last time I ever saw her:” Judy Garland in Decline

The Other Side of the Rainbow: With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol by Mel Tormé

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CBR14Bingo: Cold (the wintery chill of the sight of a full staff of people leaving a woman to slowly kill herself) While it was interesting reading about the behind the scenes of the ill-fated Judy Garland Show, this is a very sad book and it’s a grim look into the waste that can occur on the heels of abuse with no help afterwards. I think what struck me the most reading this is that Tormé never has the thought t0 get Judy some help — […]

“By making me a bitch, you have freed me from the trite, sexist, bourgeois prison of ‘likability.’ Any idiot can be liked. It takes talent to scare the crap out of people.’

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 23/30 This was great. I’m not normally a fan of celebrity memoirs, because in my experience the books are often being written just because the celebrity wants to write a book, and there’s no literary reason for the book to exist. I don’t mean that in a snobby way, but more in the way that said celebrities just don’t have anything to say, or they think they have something to say but they are often wrong. Alison Arngrim […]

Corona Days

Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese

Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost

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After two-plus years of successfully evading the coronavirus, it finally caught up to me last week. Fortunately, my symptoms were mild (vaccinated and boosted), the only one lingering was fatigue. That and family responsibilities left me little time to write reviews this past week. So I decided to put these three here instead of my monthly dump because they were all worthy of longer reviews, two good, one damn fine. Honor Thy Father **** One of the things that made The Sopranos such an excellent television […]



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