Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About esmemoria

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In my walking around life, I miss my old, blind pug (the Ancient Mariner), help amazing college students become teachers, and tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: esmemoria's Quick Questions interview.)

esmemoria's Reviews:

A YA Book that Quotes Richard Wright

The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket

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Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the sky-scrapers in our cities toppling? — Richard Wright, Native Son The Penultimate Peril is the 12th book–the penultimate book–of A Series of Unfortunate Events. For my reviews of the 10th and 11th books, go here and here. The travails of the Baudelaire orphans continue in The Penultimate Peril, and if anything, get darker. The book takes place in the Hotel Denouement, where the children take on […]

We All Live in a Broken Submarine

The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket

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The Baudelaires drifted along in cold, dark silence, feeling afraid and confused and strangely lonely. – The Grim Grotto After reading Book 11 The Grim Grotto in A Series of Unfortunate Events, a heretofore unknown thalassophobia has seized me. Maybe that’s why this book in the series seemed the darkest thus far. For background on the series, see my review here. Calling this the grimmest book of the series is saying something. The Baudelaire orphans have been on the run from the villainous Count Olaf […]

Reading this Series is a Slippery Slope of Delight

The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket

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Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like. – The Slippery Slope The 13-book series “A Series of Unfortunate Events” is conversely the most fun I’ve had reading in ages, written by Lemony Snicket (the pseudonym for author Daniel Handler) (by pseudonym I mean a different name and persona) (that aside is inspired by one of the recurring conventions in the series) (all will be revealed soon). The series follows […]

Mystery as Lightweight Snack

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

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I’ve been having some trouble making it through another book for CBR. I started a collection of Ngaio Marsh mysteries, but half-way through the stories dropped off in interest and quality. I then made it about a third of the way through The Best Mystery Stories of 2018, but I didn’t seem to like any of the selected authors. Grumpy, and falling behind in my reading, I seized on The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. Skimming through some reviews it seemed to be a quick, […]

“We are all of us ill prepared for what is to come”

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

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I saw the film No Country for Old Men long before I ever read the book, and it is #2 on my list of all-time favorite movies. I’ve read two other books by McCarthy, Blood Meridian (brilliant but a very dense read) and The Road. Now that I’ve read No Country for Old Men, the movie really did the book justice. While I liked the book a lot, it’s one of those rare cases where I think the movie was a little better. Set in […]

A Serviceable Mystery

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

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I love a good mystery. I can tear through an absorbing mystery in a day, but I slow down for certain mysteries because of the depth of the characters.  While Case Histories moves at a decent clip, the characters are sketched with more mannerisms and exposition than depth. To her credit, though, author Kate Atkinson is quite good at portraying the many forms of grief and loss. While I did not find this mystery very satisfying in the end, I do appreciate the effort that went in […]



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