Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

But You Can’t Take the Neighborhood Out of You

Gravesend by William Boyle

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: White Whale  And so I circle back to the beginning of William Boyle’s catalog, with his new one Shoot the Moonlight Out already in hand. I tried reading Gravesend multiple times over the years. But it didn’t stick. It reminded me of George Pelecanos’ work, which I admire more than enjoy: character-focused neighborhood-centric stories in which crime just randomly happens and people get drawn in because they can’t escape their circumstances. Those books always sound like fun more than they read like it. At […]

Not pure fluff, but very, very good.

The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient, #3) by Helen Hoang

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I liked the first two books in this series, but this one is on another level. It’s very personal and you can tell, even before you get to the end and the author’s note where she straight out says that the book is half memoir. With this book, she was Working Through Some Shit. However, just because you write what you know as an author doesn’t mean that you will write something good or compelling, but Hoang has definitely managed to do that, and I […]

Home Is Where You Make It

The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela

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In 2010, Natasha, a lecturer at a university in Scotland, is shocked when her student Oz is arrested in her presence as a possible jihadist, especially as she has become close to him and his mother. In the 19th century, Imam Shamil, Natasha’s research subject and one of Oz’s ancestors, is the leader of the Caucasian resistance against Imperial Russia. In an effort to turn the tide and to get his son Jamaleldin back, who was kidnapped by Russian forces many years earlier and has […]

Gao’s debut is messy, but yet, it is wonderfully so!

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

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Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American is a messy book. But it is all wrapped up in a neatly created graphic novel. The world of Laura Gao has been seen in other stories (this is a coming-of-age story with features we know: immigration, expectations of family, coming out), but hers is completely unique to her and therefore, to the reader. At first, the book seems like it might be about the pandemic, and what happens to her and her family as Chinese […]

The Wolf’s Hour – Robert McCammon (1989)

The Wofl's Hour by Robert McCammon

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World War II! Nazis! Spies! A weirdly large amount of sex! Werewolves! Russians! This book is all of the above and mo…! Wait, no. It’s all of the above. This is a book where Robert McCammon had a great idea for a spy novel, and seemed to take it seriously enough to where it’s never quite farcical, allowing the premise to add whatever level of farce was needed, and not the plot itself. The novel itself is about a Russian-born, British spy whose knowledge of […]

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (2021)

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

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So this is the latest Jonathan Franzen novel, and what I can say about it is that it’s definitely a Jonathan Franzen novel. I think all of his novels are definitely Jonathan Franzen novel, but he’s one of those writers who generates a lot of preconceived notions (some fair; some not), but he’s been pretty consistent. I highly recommend that anyone who likes Jonathan Franzen, anyone who doesn’t like Jonathan Franzen but is willing to be have that idea challenged, and anyone who likes Jonathan […]



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