In the Cannonball Read Facebook group, someone awesome posted an article called “The best books of 2016 list you get when you combine 36 “Best Books of 2016” lists.” The Girls is 6th on that list, appearing in 10 of the 36 “Best Books of 2016” lists combined for the “ultimate list.” It’s okay. Here’s what it has going for it: it’s completely real. Here’s what it has against it: it’s not new. The Girls is the story of an older woman reminiscing about that […]
“Lads” have never seemed so unpleasant.
3.5 stars I read Among the Thugs for a Sociology of Sports class that I’m taking right now, but I see no reason not to review it here. This is an intense book. Buford spent a few years in the late 1980s insinuating himself into a group of “football hooligans” – what we would call soccer fans in the US. Football fandom is absolutely a lifestyle for these men, and violence is a given. Buford wanted to understand why they did what they did: rioting […]
Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them
It’s not every day that I hear about an almost twenty-year-old book from both Mrs. Julien and Amy Poehler. Yet that’s how I came to learn about The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. I’m pretty sure Mrs. Julien mentioned it in an offhand manner in a comment at some point. And then Amy Poehler cited it as her most-quoted reading material in Yes, Please. I didn’t realize it was written way back in 1997 until I went and found the book at the […]
A new Lehane drama that I would call “Mystic River Lite”
A bleak story filled with flawed individuals trying to survive in a flawed society, expertly written in the dark and violent tone of Mystic River but somehow lacking the heart and soul and depth of that brilliant novel. Lehane created The Drop from a screenplay, which in turn was forged from a short story Lehane had written but shelved a decade ago. The story centers around Bob Saginowski, an emotionally-damaged guy who tends bar in his cousin’s crime-linked pub, devoutly attends church services on Sundays, […]
Mosley probes black-white relations in novel set in 1965 Watts
This classic noir mystery takes place during the summer of 1965, during the bloody rampages in Watts that devastated portions of Los Angeles and left a permanent boot mark on the nation’s collective backside. A white man in the wrong place and the wrong time is dragged out of his car and beaten severely before he manages to break away from the mob and is given shelter in the nearby apartment of a young black woman known as Little Scarlet. When her beaten, strangled and […]
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