Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Hell Hath No Fury

Widows by Lynda La Plante

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Widows the movie was perhaps my favorite film of 2018. A crackling crime thriller with polished dialogue and sharp social commentary, it’s the best crime movie I’ve seen in recent years. I didn’t know until after seeing it that it was based on an English time show created by famed auteur Lynda La Plante. The book is a tie-in to the show. La Plante’s Prime Suspect was one of my least favorite reads in 2018. It wasn’t bad by any stretch, but the writing felt static. I later […]

Get Out

The Expendable Man by Dorothy Hughes

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I need a valium after reading this. I’ve written in this space before and in other places about my concern when white authors write from the perspective of non-white characters. Obviously, people writing trans-racially is not uncommon, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. Many great works of literature would be lost without folks doing this. And yet, considering the strong power dynamics of white supremacy in the United States (and frankly, the globe), a more natural distance separates colonizer from the colonized, no matter […]

Pop, six, squish, uh-uh, Cicero, Lipschitz

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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I had been looking forward to this novel since I read the first reviews several months ago and it did not disappoint. What a fantastic debut! The novel opens with Korede getting a phone call from her sister. Her boyfriend is dead, and she needs help cleaning up. And it’s not the first time Korede has gotten this kind of call from her younger sister Ayoola. This novel is fun, dark and a very quick and enjoyable read. It’s the story of an older sister […]

Shoulder Shrug – Into the Water

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I greatly enjoyed Paula Hawkins’ debut novel, “Girl on the Train.” I read it as an audiobook and found it compelling and interesting from beginning to end. A twisty thriller with unreliable narrators and shifting truths that kept you on your toes. I was thus excited to embark on her second novel, “Into the Water” but did not have the same experience and won’t be recommending this one to others. A sleepy English town is rocked by the “suicide” by water of one of its […]

Expectations Mostly Met

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Movies and books share many obvious differences but what’s especially difficult for the reader versus the cinephile is there aren’t nearly as many movies as there are books. You’d have to practically live under a rock not to know about films like Aquaman and Vice premiering close to or on Christmas, and even if you want to find info non-blockbuster popular indy types like The Favourite, the internet makes that relatively easy. Whereas with books, there are thousands (millions?) that get released yearly throughout a wide range of genres and if […]

Tana French – take my money.

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I have been recommending Tana French ad nauseum every time someone asks me for a book recommendation, ever since I discovered her delightful series in 2007. I have two left to read and I purposefully wait as looong as I can manage before reading one because they are so good and knowing I have one on the horizon makes me happy. That being said, imagine my delight as I’m perusing the “Hot Picks” aisle at my local library and see she has a new one […]



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