Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Stop, I’m Already Dead

Essex Dogs by Dan Jones

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I’m a Dan Jones guy. I enjoy his entertaining and well-researched history books (The Templars) and television programmes. His debut work of fiction (historical, of course) is Essex Dogs, the story of an English mercenary group invading France in the fourteenth century. The Dogs were formerly led by “The Captain,” although he has disappeared for reasons unknown. “Loveday” is the de factor leader of the Dogs these days, and “The Scotsman” is his right-hand man. Where Loveday is a bit taciturn, The Scotsman is, well, […]

Fringe

American Cosmic: UFOs, religion, technology by D.W. Pasulka

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I got here because I’m a couch potato in love with streaming services. Last year, I was bingeing all the exclusive programming that Showtime had to offer me on a week-long free trial. I came across a series called UFO. One of the talking heads on the show was long-time Las Vegas reporter/Murrow/Peabody award-winner George Knapp. I found him funny and engaging. Knapp was more credible than a lot of the movers and shakers in the field, so I started following him on social media. […]

Staring at the Sun

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott

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“Either this is madness, or it Hell.” “It is neither; it is Knowledge.” Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland is, in this reviewer’s calculations, 35% Just for Fun, 30% Social Satire, and 35% Devotional to Truth. I like all of that stuff, so I really liked this book. I recommend it to anyone looking for real answers, what I like to call The Search. The narrator/writer of Flatland is a square. I don’t mean a boring person from the 1950s; I mean an actual square on a […]

The Wolves of Sports Television

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales

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The thing I appreciated about this book the most was how it came into my possession. Several years ago (pre-COVID), I went to an estate sale in my parents’ neighborhood. From what I could tell, the person for whom the estate sale was held was a retired military guy, very into sports and “dad” books, with great taste in music. He had lots of interesting books and music CDs, and I bought this book, an old Yardbirds live recording, and a random tool. Sometimes estate […]

feed me with your kiss

The Widowmaker by Hannah Morrissey

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Last year I read and raved about Hannah Morrissey’s debut crime thriller, Hello, Transcriber. That was the first book in the Black Harbor series, set in a crumbling town in the American Midwest. The city of Black Harbor is the recurring character, along with the gothic and…I guess Scandi crime feel of cold, dread, and horror (but not Horror horror). The Widowmaker is the second book in the Black Harbor series. Whereas Transcriber was a tour de force in atmospherics and language, Morrissey puts forth […]

“This war was a choice.”

Wake of War by Zac Topping

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Wake of War author Zac Topping is a veteran, and it shows. In Topping’s debut novel, war is not treated as a glorious thing, but rather as an absurd cancer, or a toxin. The reader leaves with the distinct feeling that any sort of violence damages everyone involved. Somehow, despite the gravity of the subject, Topping wrote an entertaining book. He has a knack for simultaneously shoving the reader into the chaos of a firefight, while also slowing things down to more closely inspect the […]



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