Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About thewheelbarrow

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I'm a 41yo father of three. My goal is to write as I read. Like it is every year.

thewheelbarrow's Reviews:

A good and deserving sequel

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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The Testaments is a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale and I found it to be just as haunting as its predecessor, perhaps even more so. The significant difference between the two is that The Handmand’s Tail uses a single POV whereas The Testaments uses three characters. That difference comes through in many ways but one in particular that I thought was most interesting is the way that the different books affected the reader. The Handmaid’s Tale through Offred’s POV only shows the world of Gilead […]

Are we sure this isn’t Breakers backstory?

The Institute by Stephen King

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This is the book that made me a Stephen King fan. I read and loved The Dark Tower but I still held the belief that King was a horror writer and that is not really my thing. The Institute is a thriller with elements of suspense, fantasy, and science fiction. The protagonist is twelve years old so I’m sure the argument could be made that it is YA (I think it is appropriate for young adult readers but should not be categorized as YA as […]

Humanizing a Goddess

Circe by Madeline Miller

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I bought Circe last year after it won a few awards. I finally read it because a friend from work read it and recommended it to me. We were both changing jobs so I wanted to read it while we still worked together so that we could discuss it. It was fantastic. It reminded me, thematically, of Grendel by John Gardner in that the premise is the book is the POV from a character that is considered an antagonist in a different, famous story. Like […]

… and Others Don’t – A Cautionary Tale

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins

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This book is widely recommended in my circles. In the Army, we LOVE books that focus on leadership and culture and building successful teams. Good to Great is about how good companies become great companies. More than that, it required the companies studied to have prolonged (at least 15 years) of good performance, followed by at least 15 years of great performance.  Performance was generally measured as a comparison between the stock performance of the Fortune 500.  Collins and his team of 21 researchers determined […]

Future Required Reading

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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I love Coates writing style. When I read Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power, I wished that I could write like him, with his style and vocabulary. He says things the way I would want to say them. That is why I read The Water Dancer and nothing has changed. I still wish I could write like Coates but the thing I like best about him is that I know that I cannot because I have not and will […]

CANNONBALL! Two years in a row!

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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  As always, I am behind on my reviews but that means that I get to pick which book I would review for my 52nd of the year (I had six choices). I chose Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys for a few reasons. First, it was probably the best of the un-reviewed books on my list, though competition was fierce. Still unwritten are Wanderers by Chuck Wendig, How Long ’til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin, and The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3) by Nnedi Okorafor, all […]



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