Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

In A Summer Swelter

Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry

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I sort of came to this book backwards. I had made it a point in life to learn as little about Charles Manson as possible. I knew he was some sort of specifically evil serial killer, responsible for the deaths of Sharon Tate and others. I knew what he did happened in the 60s. I knew he was considered the modern day boogeyman. But when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood prepared to hit theaters five years ago, I decided it was time to learn more about […]

Muuuurrrrrdeeeer

Women Who Kill by Sarah Tanat-Jones

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Women Who Kill by Sarah Tanat-Jones has its pros and cons. The biggest cons are the triggers. I took this from another review: use of the words ‘trans*xual’ and ‘transv*stite’ instead of transgender, mentions of rape & sexual abuse, violence, death.  Now I take issue with the use of death as it’s a book about women killers, and therefore, death is implied. However, it is the way that some deaths are mentioned or who the victims were that I am assuming they are referencing.  Afterall, […]

February-March 2024 Leftovers

The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones

A Lowcountry Bride by Preslaysa Williams

Bone White by Ronald Malfi

Alexander the Great by Phillip Freeman

Nero: Matricide, Murder and Music in Imperial Rome by Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth

Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James

A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block

The Killing Kind by John Connolly

Shōgun by James Clavell

Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark

A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime by Casey Sherman

Village in the Dark by Iris Yamashita

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland

The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age by Michael Woolraich

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Rain, rain, go away. I thought my reading count looked too low and then I realized I didn’t do leftovers for February, so here’s Feb-March combined. The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and Rise of the Tudors ***** Jones is such a talented historian. Gets all the important stuff of the Wars of the Roses in great detail and lets the story entertain. His Templars book will soon be on my radar. A Lowcountry Bride**** Had to read this for a library […]

Remember Slenderman? Here’s the case that made him famous outside the internet

Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale

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In 2014, in Wisconsin, a young girl was nearly killed. There were a number of reasons this case was unusual, but among the top were that it was perpetrated by two 12-year old girls and that the apparent motive revolved around the fictional and internet-famous Slenderman. While this sounds fascinating, it was less about Slenderman and more about the delusions kids can talk themselves into. What was more relevant is the fact that one of the two girls was experiencing undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time. […]

Fashionable People Doing Unfashionable Things

Deliberate Cruelty, Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo

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Content Warning: This book deals with murder, as the title suggests. The book also addresses spousal abuse and suicide. This review mentions the murder but does not touch on the other topics. The novel opens with a bit of snarky back-and-forth between Truman Capote and the Millionaire’s Wife of the title (Ann Woodward), establishing that the two are not on friendly terms. She allegedly uses a slur about his lifestyle (Truman Capote was openly gay) to describe him, and he calls her “Mrs. Bang Bang” […]

“It was the sad privilege of blood relations to love him despite all.”

This House of Grief by Helen Garner

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In Australia on Father’s Day, 2005, a car carrying a man and his three young sons careened into a dam. Robert Farquharson survived, but his sons drowned. The ensuing murder trial would drag on for seven long years. You really do stumble across books on Goodreads that you’d never get to read otherwise. I have never heard of this case or this author before, but when it popped up in my recommendations, I was intrigued enough to put in a request at the library – […]



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