Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

About Jake

CBR14 Bingo Badges
CBR14 Levels
CBR14 Participant
CBR13 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR10 participant

I love reading!

Jake's Reviews:

> FAQ Home
> Articles by: Jake

Housewives, They Are Desperate…

One of Us is Dead by Jeneva Rose

by Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR14 Bingo: recommended. This book was recommended by author May Cobb, whose “My Summer Darlings” is one of the best things I read this year. I was looking for a female-focused thriller with a similar lack of inhibition.  Ok, right off the bat, this book is bonkers. If you looking at the premise and expecting any degree of verisimilitude, give this a hard pass. But it’s the willingness to lean into its bonkers-ness (?), to go over the top and just […]

Easy Does It

Just One Look by Lindsay Cameron

by Leave a Comment

Read this as part of CBR14 Bingo: Minds. The main character plays mind games as a stalker. She also matches her mind against someone else in a game of corporate espionage.  After reading consecutive stinkers from two of my favorite writers (Charles Willeford and Stephen King), it was refreshing to dive into this entertaining thriller from a new name. I was searching for something corporate-y at the bookstore the other day and I came upon this one randomly after finding the authors name on a list of financial thrillers. […]

Your Favorites Can Still Write Stinkers

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

by 3 Comments

Read this as part of CBR14Bingo: heart. One of the characters has a heart attack, won’t say which one. Also, Stephen King is a writer who has my heart. I love his books but this one was bad. I don’t really know where to start with how much I did not enjoy this book. And I feel terrible for that because I love Stephen King and appreciate what he is trying to do: rewrite beloved fantasy tales as a means of pandemic escapism. But ugh, this is […]

Why is this Man Mad?

Understudy for Death by Charles Willeford

by Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR14Bingo: font. The book is told from the perspective of a journalist. Several times throughout the novel, the font of the novel will change when an article that the journalist or someone else writes is inserted in the story.  It’s going to be tough to squeeze 250 words out of here but I’ll try. I was planning on dumping this with my end-of-the-month reads but it checked the “font” box off CBR Bingo so… Charles Willeford loves writing about domesticity. And while he’s […]

It’s Only a Matter Of…

Trust by Hernan Diaz

by Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR14Bingo: Dough. The book involves a man who makes a lot of money (“dough”) off the stock market in the 20s and 30s and how stories revolve around him. I was excited to get this one given both the premise and reviews. I have a yen for these kinds of neo-Gatsby stories set in the early part of the 20th century that examine finance and/or gangsterism juxtaposed with the American Dream. Legs by William Kennedy qualifies for this label, as does Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan […]

August 2022 Leftovers

Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy

Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself by K.C. Constantine

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris

Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees by Bob Klapisch and Pete Solotaroff

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Finley Ball: How Two Outsiders Turned the Oakland As into a Dynasty and Changed Baseball Forever by Nancy Finley

Sea Change by Robert B. Parker

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

Ms. Tree, Volume 1 by Max Alan Collins

by Leave a Comment

Some extra books I read in August. What a miserably hot month… Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood**** Less a conventional biopic on The Mick and more a look at his life vis-a-vis his legend and the backdrop of postwar America. Not as thorough as I would’ve liked but still riveting given how Jane Leavy presents her subject.   Greenwich Park*** Again glad I slept on my review. I really liked how this started but after a while, it morphed into […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo