Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I know she’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I really like Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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I very much liked this novel! Reid has this knack for creating interesting scenarios that don’t involve thrillers or fantasy or anything much beyond the ordinary, and for me she does a great job doing so. This book is written entirely in the form of interviews–sometimes by the author, sometimes in the form of faux clippings from other magazines (or TV shows?) but always engaging. Someone called it out as “all tell, no show” but I disagree. The in-depth interview is a time honored tradition […]

I was pretty excited for this one but ultimately felt like it fell a bit flat

My Sweet Girl by Amanda Jayatissa

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The biggest issue I have with reading so much is that I’m starting to recognize twists before they come… I’ve read a number of twisty/tense books this year (The Plot comes to mind as a recent example, as does All the Light We Cannot See since I’ve only just written the reviews) and there’s a number of tricks/techniques that an author can use to heighten the tension and keep it going. In The Plot, our narrator is the one in possession of the titular plot but not of the […]

Is there any genre that Moreno-Garcia can’t tackle?

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I unfortunately don’t remember too much of this book, but I enjoyed reading it so 3 stars it is. This is a stylized noir, with MacGuffins we never see, dames who’ll do you dead, gangsters with guns jumping out of cars, and a vague sense that no matter what happens to our little hill of beans the larger tale won’t skip a beat. Perhaps it’s part of the genre, but I enjoyed that our view into the whole dramatic tale was Maite, a 30-something secretary […]

Perfectly pretentious for me!

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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While my friend Aileen though this was too literary and pretentious for her, it was 100% in my wheelhouse–gimme ALL the literary pretention, that’s my jam through and through. I thought this book was hilarious, maybe not in the laughing out loud type way but definitely in a “I was mentally chuckling throughout” sort of way. Jacob is every character trait I have ever despised boiled into one character and luckily you’re not supposed to like him! Now when I say every character trait I […]

A recommendation that was a good change of pace

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

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Cityscape: there’s the city of Saint-Malo on the front! I originally had this as a four star novel, but I’ve knocked it down to three stars due to Doerr’s use of short, different-POV chapters to generate suspense, which I’ve come to realize it’s one of my least favorite mechanisms to generate suspense and tension. And in a book like this–where we are in literal Nazi occupied France, late stages of war–it’s almost unnecessary. But it does let you elongate smaller sections of action into more […]

This White Whale Almost Did Me In

The Plague by Albert Camus

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CBR Bingo – White Whale The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence. – The Plague My reading froze up completely as I tried to read Camus’ The Plague. I think I’ve been trying to get through this book for a month. It’s not because it isn’t good (it’s really good) or too slow (a bit slow in places, but so worth it) or triggering me (nice time to read about a plague). It’s….I don’t know why. For weeks I just stopped reading […]



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