Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A jury that made the wrong call. OR DID THEY.

The Holdout by Graham Moore

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I must have read this entire book in about four or five hours. I was expecting to spend about three days with it, because my reading has slowed down ever since lockdown/quarantine/whatever started. I can still read, but for less stretches of time, and at a slower pace than normal. Several books I’ve just absolutely crawled through. But not this one! This one broke through for some reason, and I did not want to put it down. (ETA: This was written back in late April […]

Great except for the bits where I wanted to put it in the freezer.

Recursion by Blake Crouch

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Why must Blake Crouch give me all this nightmare fuel? I’m serious, I don’t know why I thought I could get out of this book without my brain being swirled into funnels of terrorized adrenaline. There was little inkling of it in Dark Matter with SPOILERS all of those parallel worlds, and several of them being nuclear wastelands, but that was after the fact. Here, we get it up close and personal and in the moment. Seven times. What the fuck END SPOILERS. I swear, […]

Not at all what I was expecting. #CBRBingo – Birthday

Firestarter by Stephen King

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I’ve read a fair amount of Stephen King by this point, and this is one of the better ones. Aside from some dated language and ideas (fatphobia, gender essentialism, homophobic/racist language used mostly by bad guys), I liked this one almost as much as I like Misery. Good villains, simple but effective story. Just a really well done horror/suspense novel. The 1980s just ooze from every page. I actually wasn’t anticipating the intensity of this novel. It opens in the middle of things, and our […]

Review roundup! Female-centric thillers

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I badly need to catch up with writing reviews, but don’t really have the inclination to write long and individual reviews for books that were mostly ‘meh’. I sometimes pick up thrillers when I need a break from fantasy, and this review covers several that I’ve read since the early summer, in order that I read them. In some cases I have to cast my mind back rather a long way–and some definitely made an impression more than others. Most of these I read pretty […]

There is a cat in this book whose name is Donut.

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Scalzi’s books are always such good palette cleansers. Head On was fast and fun (and a little bit infuriating). This is the second book in the Lock In series, which started with 2014’s Lock In. You don’t need to have read the first book if this one tickles your fancy, but you should, because it’s great. The premise here is that in the near future, a disease called Haden’s Syndrome (after the first lady of the US, it’s most famous victim) makes it so that […]

I reject your heroine and substitute my own, part II: the ginger mollusc

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I really like Karin Slaughter. I’m not generally a thriller reader, but I make an exception for her books. Every year, I eagerly await her next novel, whether it’s a standalone or a new instalment of her series. She has a nice turn of phrase and her work, especially the earlier stuff, has traces of southern gothic running through it. She’s no Faulkner but hell, if I wanted Faulkner I’d read Faulkner. I read Slaughter because it’s fun. Gory, gruesome, over-the-top fun. Cop Town was […]



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