Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

Registration for CBR13 is now open! Join us for another year of sticking it to cancer, one book at a time!

About Jake

CBR13 participantCBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR10 participant

I love reading!

Jake's Reviews:

> FAQ Home
> Articles by: Jake

The Secret History

We Keep The Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper

by 1 Comment

We Keep the Dead Close is not a great example of true crime fiction and in lesser hands, it would not be a good book period. Becky Cooper leaves no stone unturned, no archaeological dig unexcavated in getting to the bottom of Jane Britton’s murder. That part is familiar. But she is also taking a deeper look at the narratives we tell ourselves to get through the day and understand the world. Which is a broader point to make, though she makes it well. I can’t […]

The Gentleman Gangster

Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin by Lee Server

by Leave a Comment

Ever since I read Don Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine last year, I’ve been obsessed with SoCal mobster tales. Martin Scorsese came close to adapting Frankie Machine before he was seduced by Charles Brandt’s inferior I Heard You Paint Houses, which he turned into The Irishman. If Scorsese had wanted to do a lion-in-winter mafia tale, I wish he had done Frankie or a movie on Rosselli’s life. Both of which are more interesting than another northeastern gangster story. Lee Server is an expert on pop history, with bios of Ava Gardner and […]

This Year’s Girl

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

by 1 Comment

Early on in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, I was getting frustrated. I wanted to know why Taylor Jenkins Reid was using the journalist framing device to extract such detail around the curiosity of a multiple married woman. Don’t get me wrong; I know celebrity relationships are a constant source of fascination with folks. But I just didn’t feel like it made for an interesting story. I wanted to read about this fictional Evelyn Hugo staring in fictional movies, getting into fictional Hollywood feuds, etc. And […]

Together We Cry

Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder by Piu Marie Eatwell

by Leave a Comment

As much as I love Los Angeles stories and true crime tales, I’ve long avoided reading about the murder of Elizabeth Short. I did read James Ellroy’s fictional take and watch I Am The Night but both of those were kind of pop pulpy examinations with little basis in reality geared for entertainment. The main reason I’ve avoided it is I don’t find the murder and brutality of white women as fascinating as others, particularly white men, seem to do. I know there are many psychological […]

Dodger Blues

Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between by Eric Nusbaum

by 2 Comments

If you’re a sports fan with a social conscience, you’ve probably had that moment where you realize that sports, professional and collegiate, are a labor-exploiting racist racket. It’s comparable to being a kid and realizing Santa Claus isn’t real. I’ve had those moments too, long before the backlash to Colin Kaepernick’s protest or seeing the words “Black Lives Matter” on a basketball court. Eric Nusbaum, a sports fan like me, had it when he was a kid, when an octogenarian former activist and HUAC victim […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay