Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Manly Men Doing Manly Things

The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez-Reverte

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It didn’t take too long for me to realize who this author reminded me of.  Not particularly his style, but more his content.  Hemingway.  Coming from me, that is not a complement. Faulques is a professional photographer who specializes in the battlefield.  In Serbia, he photographs a young Croatian fighter, Markovik, and the picture wins a prestigious award, and is also published widely.  Unfortunately, it also makes Markovik himself famous, and his wife and child are killed.  Thus, he is searching for Faulques.  Meanwhile, Faulques […]

October Wrap Up

Three Farmers on their way to a Dance by Richard Powers

Candles Burning by Michael McDowell and Tabitha King

Dead Men Can't Complain by Peter Clines

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

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Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance – 4/5 Stars This is Richard Powers’s first novel, and like a lot of first novels (he was 26 when he published it) it’s both good and precocious in various ways. The novel itself follows a few different threads, and ends up being similarly structured to a few other Powers novels. One thread involves a narrator with the last name P who is researching a photograph and learning about stories from Europe right up to and during […]

The Road More Traveled By

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

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Earlier this year I finally got around to reading Amor Towles’s second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow. I don’t know why I put it off for so long. It’s an engaging story replete with memorable characters and events, but even more, it’s a profound look at life and what makes it worth living. Despite the constraint of setting nearly the entire novel within a single hotel, Towles managed to portray a life full of love and friendship, heartbreak and redemption. It’s a major work of […]

A kids book written for youth marketed to adults

Beezley and the Witch: Selected Spells by Willow Mason

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An interesting premise: Check! A good heroine and interesting secondary characters: check! A location that makes me want to visit: check A fully-fledged idea that is well executed: eh…. check? I have no idea how to write this article without sounding like an ungrateful wretch. I got 3 books for less than the price of one by a special promotion online. All of the books kept me engaged and interested in their stories, there was nothing glaringly bad in the writing, and yet… Beezley and […]

Life in Africa, But Probably Not at All What You Are Thinking Of

A Girl Is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

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There was something about the writing of this account of growing up female in 1970s – 80s Uganda that struck me as different but I couldn’t quite place it.  And then I read an interview with the author wherein she explained that as an African writer writing in English, you have a choice.  Are you writing for an English-speaking audience, for whom explanations may be needed, or are you writing for your people?  Makumbi chose the latter, and the book becomes all the much richer […]

Some Legends Don’t Withstand the Test of Time

Bram Stoker's Dracula by Bram Stoker, Edited by Jan Needle

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Full disclosure, I had no idea I’d ordered the edited and abridged version from the library, but I decided to give it a go anyway since the abridged version was still some 400 pages. I never had to read “Dracula” in school, and while, like most people, I’m aware of the general premise of the story, my goal of reading at least one classic a year put this on my spooky-reads list for Halloween. Long story short, A real estate agent, Jonathan Harker, goes to […]



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