Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I keep my heart safely between the pages of this book…

Overseas by Beatriz Williams

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Kate Wilson thinks her life is pretty normal. She just wants to finish her internship at Sterling Bates so she can head off to business school and become a commodities trader in her own right. Enter Julian Lawrence—Sterling Bates client and mysterious billionaire hedgie. Despite a rocky beginning, Julian can’t seem to get enough of Kate. He’s using the L word before they’ve even had their first date. Suddenly her life is anything but normal. The world slides sideways—Kate is fired for alleged insider trading, […]

Money Never Sleeps

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

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What’s incredible about Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker is just how funny it is. You want to be mad at all of these people for ruining the world, but they’re so ridiculous, you often can’t help but laugh. I’m more than familiar with Lewis’ work. Moneyball is one of my all-time favorite novels. The Big Short had me real angry. Lewis is one of the great journalists of my time. This was the book that kick started his career. And he didn’t need long to discover his writing voice. Alternating between his time as […]

The Vanities Bonfire

The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques

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Having read this and listened to a podcast, I’m convinced the Bernie Madoff thing was far more complicated than even he realized. Madoff, who died last week, has been an intriguing character in American history, though a mysterious one. He tried to fall on his sword regarding his Ponzi Scheme, and when that failed, he haphazardly and, it seems, untruthfully, explained how it worked and when it started. Diana B. Henriques does as good of a job as one can recently expect with untangling the […]

More Vacation Reading

Black Edge: Insider Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar

Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Attack on the West by Luke Harding

Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8? by Ethan Brown

The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep by Lawrence Block

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I was on vacation last week (with all the requisite social distancing procedures) and I did a lot of vacation reading. I’m not sure why but lately I’ve been on a non-fiction kick, thus, three out of the four books I read were non-fic. Fortunately for me, everything I read was at least good and all merited the coveted 4-stars. Black Edge I became interested in this story when I learned that Steve Cohen and Preet Bharara’s relationship was the basis for the hit Showtime […]

Alternate Title: The Boomer Investor

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

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I don’t know anything about the share market. Nada. As soon as the S&P stats appear on the nightly news, my eyes glaze over and I’m turned off. So I thought I should do something about that. I’m a women in my 30s with a family to support, after all. I figured it was time to educate myself. I did some cursory googling, asking myself “WWWBD (What Would Warren Buffet Do)?”, before buying The Intelligent Investor. It seemed like a good place to start. And […]

More ways Wall Street can screw you

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

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I’ve been procrastinating writing this review because, while Michael Lewis is one of my favorite nonfiction writers, this book proved to be a bit of a struggle for me. Maybe that’s because I’m too jaded to be surprised that banks and stock traders had found yet another way to screw over the little guy. Maybe it’s because everything I know about the stock market I learned from Trading Places, so if it’s not about pork bellies or frozen concentrated orange juice, it doesn’t arouse my […]



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