Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Salty Dog

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

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Something strange happens to you when you cross that threshold from ‘woman’ to ‘mother’. Time becomes elastic, thoughts become deafening, nights fill with waking while days fill with sleep, and sleep becomes an endless battle. There is a loneliness felt deep in your bones when you’re awake and feeding your young at 3am, the world around you still and quiet. It’s a moment in time that is hard to touch with stories and fiction. Brief yet endless. My son is now four and his baby […]

“Caring about someone isn’t complicated. It isn’t easy. But it isn’t complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.”

Small Favor (Dresden Files #10) by Jim Butcher

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In one word: Action-packed Cannonball Read Bingo: Reader’s Choice (Replacing Fauna) Dresden is in it again. High stakes, low chance of survival, will he come out on top? At this point, book 10 of I don’t even know how many, it’s not a spoiler that um, yes, he will. But I will say this one really is firing on all cylinders. The whole gang is around in this one, gangster Marcone, the vile Denarians, and one of my favorites, the Archive, the 12-year-old girl who […]

A little history, a little mystery

A Deadly Penance: A Templar Knight Mystery by Maureen Ash

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The Templar Knight Mysteries are set around 1200 AD in England and feature a sleuth named Bascot de Marins, a Templar Knight who has seen action in the Holy Land, lost an eye, and acquired a mute sidekick named Gianni. I suspect that more of Bascot’s background was revealed in previous mysteries, but the reader can enjoy this one without necessarily going back to read the previous stories. Bascot is 40-ish, still fit, and a man who cares deeply for the less fortunate. He has […]

Batman Begins

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller

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Batman was created in 1939 as a dark vigilante waging his own personal war against the criminal underworld. The comics built on the pulp detective fiction that was popular at the time, and were heavily influenced by The Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, and other masked heroes. In the post-war years, Batman was softened so that he would appeal more to children. Despite still selling well, Batman faced obstacles in the 1950s. The industry itself struggled to hold on to the adult readers it captivated in the 1930s […]

What I’ve been reading since the last time I posted a bunch of books

Legacy of Conquest by Patricia Limerick

You are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

Prisoner without a Name Cell without a Number by Jacobo Timerman

Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis

Forever Flowing by Vasily Grossman

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

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Legacy of Conquest – 5/5 Stars Not the most exciting audiobook I could have listened to, but a very worthwhile overview of not only American Western history but also historiography of the field too. Patricia Limerick was at the time a historian working in a Western American university. She tells a story of a colleague getting a job with a Southern university and he declares that he should learn a little Southern history to supplement his expertise. She asks him if he learned Western history […]

The Swamp Will Eat You

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

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Since reading Russell’s short story collection, I’ve had her novel on my to-read. As always, bingo is a great time to knock a bunch of books off the TBR pile, so I finally made space for Swamplandia!. Sadly, I was underwhelmed. Russell’s writing is beautiful and there’s a ton of descriptive gems throughout the story, but plot wise, this book felt all over the place. Swamplandia! is an alligator themed adventure park run by the Bigtree family where they wrestle alligators and do stunts above the gator […]



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