Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Jake

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Jake's Reviews:

So Now Get Up

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

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Oh, Wolf Hall. So many great and beautiful moments. So many frustrating, stagnating moments. So easy to appreciate. So impossible to judge. Hilary Mantel writes dialogue with a breezy yet deep style. Her characters say a lot by saying so little. If I’m being too paradoxical, it’s because this is a book comfortable with paradox: the lowborn rising to high positions in Tudor England. It’s a stirring tale of politics and a cautionary one about the price of true reform. Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell is comfortable operating in vacuums of power. He sees an opportunity and he takes it, no matter what the […]

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We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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6/8/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:45 |

G.O.(A).T

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

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I decided to revisit the GRRM classic after the show ended. I’ve been in a prolonged reading slump due in part to stuff going on in my private life and it’s been difficult to focus on anything new. My personal library is littered with books I lost interest in 10%, 30% and one 50%. Familiarity always helps me break out of slumps and I figured that would be the case here.    I was not disappointed. The book isn’t just as great as I remember…it’s somehow better. The storylines are rich and detailed. The characters are well-developed and complex. The […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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5/30/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:44 |

Better on a Re-Read

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin

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A year ago, I binge read the first three books in the Earthsea Cycle. A Wizard of Earthsea came in a three-way tie for my favorite read of 2018. Tombs of Atuan was my least favorite of the three. I felt like it was too fascinated with the labyrinthian tombs and the ending took too much of the lead character’s agency that she had built. Anyway, I decided to go back to the Cycle and read Tehanu, which is book four. When I discovered it would include the lead from this book along with Ged, I decided Tombs of Atuan deserved a re-read. The rich imagery of […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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5/11/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:43 |

Whew

2666 by Roberto Bolano

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This isn’t going to be a conventional review because I don’t know what to say about 2666 or really make of it. I know it’s an excellent novel; it felt like Bolaño was writing through me rather than to me. But to summarize it the way I normally do (plot, good points, bad points, summation) won’t do it justice. So this is going to be a grab bag of thoughts about a stirring, complex, difficult, beautiful, exhausting, breathtaking book. -The five story lines connected in a way that was unconventional. Rather than have there be a bunch of coincidences, the pull to […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

  • 2666 by Roberto Bolano

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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5/4/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:42 |

Slumpbuster

Sunset Express by Elvis Cole

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When baseball players are in a slump, there’s an old school remedy for doing something on the side to help break out of it. It’s called finding a “slumpbuster.” I’m not going to talk about what it actually is since it’s rooted in horrific misogyny (and I suggest you don’t google it either) but I’m going to take the germ of an idea (minus the misogyny) and apply it to reading. Finishing books has been a chore lately and I was disheartened at how much I didn’t like Philip Kerr’s Metropolis so it took me a few false starts before I […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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4/18/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:41 |

Auf Wiedersehen, Old Friend

Metropolis by Philip Kerr

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The last week or so, I’ve written in different outlets about the impact Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series has had on my reading journey and personal life. While acknowledging the many faults of these books, I love them in a special way. I think Kerr is great at capturing atmosphere and cynicism to produce some truly great crime reading. “Nazi Noir” is a burgeoning genre now but Kerr’s Gunther works were really the trendsetter. Knowing this would be the last one following Kerr’s untimely death, and knowing it was set solely in Weimar Berlin, got me emotional just thinking about […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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4/15/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:40 |

Eat the Rich

Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö

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Going into reading this series, I knew Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were avowed socialists who wrote these books in large parts as a critique of inequality in Sweden. But while their beliefs do sneak out from time-to-time, they generally ground their mysteries in the tradition of a police procedural as opposed to pedagogy cloaked in mystery drag. That goes out the window with Murder at the Savoy, which is about as didactic of a book as I’ve read from them. There’s no question about it to the co-authors: the rich suck. They also suck the marrow out of the economy […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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4/10/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:39 |

My Kind of Town, Chicago is…

In A Pig's Eye by Robert Campbell

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In a time before both Amazon and GoodReads reviews became omnipresent, a person would pick something off the shelf because it interested them. They didn’t cross consult a third party to see if it would be worth their time, they just grabbed it and hoped for the best. I confess that I sometimes miss living in the stone age. I took a chance on this one after seeing it for $3 in the discount section at my favorite bookstore: The Mysterious in lower Manhattan. Rarely do I get good cell service in The Mysterious, so I don’t even recall if […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "My Kind of Town, Chicago is…"

4/8/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:38 |


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