Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Bobby Gold Stories

The Bobby Gold Stories by Anthony Bourdain

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A collection of short stories or perhaps a novel in story form about a restaurant bouncer/mob enforcer. I haven’t read anything by Anthony Bourdain before and certainly not his fiction. I was surprised when someone not primarily known for fiction writing, writes fiction, and it feels like fiction that comes together in a way that is enjoyable. Maybe my standards are too low for that kind of thing, but given how easily something like this could become a vanity project/ego trip. The stories themselves circulate […]

Short King

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

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I’m never quite sure how to review a short story collection. Recapping each individual story would get rather tedious, and there isn’t a strong thematic connection between the twenty-odd stories presented here apart from the fact that they’re all very definitely Stephen King stories. The collection kicks off with its longest entry, the novella The Mist, which sets an appropriately eerie tone. As a bunch of Mainers ride out a bizarre cataclysmic event in a grocery store, their humanity is pushed to the brink. Several […]

It’s Life

Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir by Bishakh Kumar Som

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At first, I found Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir by Bishakh Kumar Som a little confusing. You expect to get the story of Som, and while it starts off that way, you quickly go into a fictionalized version of who they are. With the character Anjali, we see who Som could be and in a way is, as their protagonist is a piece of them. This is a fun, informative and unique slice of life story that may not shatter the world but will rock it […]

The Wedding Party

The Wedding Party by Cathy Kelly

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So this hands-down was one of my least favorite Cathy Kelly books. This was all over the place and unlike her other books dealing with sisters, there was too much going on for you to even follow one person’s storyline in a coherent way. I also didn’t find the whole thing with Savannah realistic because it seemed to be going on for years and her family who supposedly is so close didn’t notice? I just found the plot contrivance this all happen the week of […]

Dignity

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

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CBR14 BINGO: Adapt, because it was adapted into the wonderful 1993 film of the same name “I’m telling you, sir, you’ll be sorry if you don’t take a walk up there. And you never know. A couple  more years and it might be too late.” This advice from a stranger on a country road to the novel’s protagonist is meant to encourage the traveler to walk up a hill and enjoy a beautiful view, but it may as well be an observation about the protagonist’s […]

Cairo, 1912, with magic. Sign me up.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

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CBR 14 BINGO: Rec’d. MsWas recommended this one to me, and I will be recommending it to others. I also saw this recommended on NPR’s list of best sci-fi and fantasy books of the last decade. In 1912 Cairo, collector of antiquities, lover of the exotic, and all around British-colonial caricature Lord Worthington meets with his Brotherhood of al-Jahiz, a group whose noble purpose is to “recover the most sacred wisdom of the ancients, to create a greater tomorrow.” Worthington’s group has taken to collecting […]



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