Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Ian McEwan (1); William Shakespeare (1-2)

Nutshell by Ian McEwan

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

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Nutshell – 4/5 Stars “So here I am, upside down in a woman.” Ian McEwan has been writing and publishing near on 50 years. His fiction can be a little hit or miss, with some of his more famous works like the Booker Prize winning Amsterdam often seen as his weakest. For me this is simply not true because he recently published an embarrassing parody of Kafka about the Boris Johnson administration called The Cockroach. This is also one of his more recent books, and […]

Patricia Beatty (1)

Charley Skedaddle by Patricia Beatty

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“As he set the hatbox on a crate beside him, Charley Quinn heard the words in his head: “If you ever got to fight alone, Charley, me lad, get your back to the wall.” This is a reread from a long time ago for me, and it’s of a type to be sure. It’s a historical middle-grade novel published in 1987 about a boy from New York City who is in the gang “The Bowery Boys,” a real gang who’s primary rival in the city […]

“When you get older, you may never have anyone sing to you personally again, but go all over the world and I bet you can’t find one baby that has never been sung to.”

The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry

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Lynda Barry’s other near-perfect YA novel, The Good Times Are Killing Me, marks my completing re-reading her non comics work, as I read and reviewed Cruddy last year. I do think Cruddy is a singular work of genius, but this novel is a close second and one that I find deeply moving and beautiful. It’s a short book, only 131 pages, but Barry manages to pack a lot of emotion and layered, thoughtful commentary on growing up, friendship, systemic societal racism, and the power of […]

Spain and Not Plain

The Queen of the South by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

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I’ve been slumping lately due to stress at work and have mostly been hewing to light fiction (see Daisy Darker). I didn’t expect to connect with Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s literary crime novel when cycling through what I wanted to read next but the writing hooked me from page one and away we went. This is an interesting book. It’s good, very good. I’m not sure it’s great but I don’t want to dwell on that. I’ll focus on what I liked: it’s absolutely a retelling in some […]

Good, Old-Fashioned Excitement

Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford

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Before getting into the review proper, I’d like to mention that my buddy L gave me Radio Girls at book swap we had at my former office. It was pretty fun – everyone at our place of business brought in some books to swap or give away during a random lunch break. It’s special to have your friends’ copies of books, and in some cases even their marginalia or notes inside of books. So, I’d recommend having a lunch break book swap. [Very minor spoilers […]

Fun but not stellar who-dunnit

The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths

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The Midnight Hour is book 6 in a series by Elly Griffiths, but the first that I have read.  I read it since I adore her Ruth Galloway series but have finished it.  Even though I started in the middle of this series, I don’t think it matters that much, it worked fine as a stand alone.  The Midnight Hour is set in 1960s Brighton, UK, where a theatrical producer has died and his retired-actress wife is implicated in his death.  The story primarily follows […]



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