Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Popular Doesn’t Mean Good

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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Bingo: Black I feel a little guilty saying this, but I was singularly unmoved by Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. I feel guilty because the book was trying so hard, and so obviously, to strike the reader’s heart. But no matter what happened, what threats were faced, what deaths were shown, I could not squeeze out an ounce of caring. The book’s narrator is death. His attention is captured by a young girl named Leisel, who he calls the book thief for her irresistible urge […]

Hands Off the Melons

Mr. Majestyk by Elmore Leonard

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Vince Majestyk is a simple man with a complicated past. He’s decorated Vietnam veteran but also an ex-con with an ex-wife and a daughter somewhere out there. But for now, he’s just a melon farmer looking to make up for last year’s losses with a bumper crop. Majestyk hires day laborers at fair wages to pick his melons, but one day he shows up to the field to find other men working the job. Majestyk is being squeezed by a local tough-guy who imagines he […]

Wherever You Go, There You Are

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett

Kiss Her Goodbye by Lisa Gardner

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CBR17 Bingo: Migrant – Both books involve characters who move to places they expect no one knows them and try, with varying success, to rebuild themselves into new shapes. The Killer Question by Janice Hallett – 5 stars Sue and Mal run a perfectly average British pub with an above average weekly quiz night, but the arrival of a mysterious new team that dominates the competition and the discovery of a body in the nearby river sends their lives into a tailspin. This is my […]

I warmed to this novel, but it took awhile

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

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CBR 17 BINGO: Family, because family relationships (police officers Jim & Jack; Anna-Lena and Roger; Ro and Julia; the bank robber and the robber’s children) are motivating factors for the characters Back in 2017, I was, like everyone else, charmed by A Man Called Ove, so when I saw another novel by Fredrik Backman in a Little Free Library, I snapped it up. It started strong when, on the first page, I smiled at this paragraph, “This story is about a lot of things, but […]

Putting the Ire in Ireland

The Drowned by John Banville

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Autumn is beginning to make its entry in rural Ireland. An expensive car stands in the middle of a field. An oddly-dressed man runs up, tells a passer-by and the inhabitants of a nearby house that his wife has left the car after a tiff and has jumped off a cliff, drowning herself into the chilly Irish sea. But something is off, and the man’s behaviour is suspicious. Days pass, and the woman is not found. It is unclear if she has ever even existed. […]

From Prison Cell to Royal Courts

The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni

The Gilded Cage by Lynette Noni

The Blood Traitor by Lynette Noni

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Bingo Square: Red (mostly The Gilded Cage but all have shades or hints of reds) I kept seeing this on book reels that randomly show up on my FB and IG accounts – it was one of those books that gets talked about but also isn’t so wildly popular that it’s off-putting. Just enough mentions here and there that it eventually stuck in my head. Overall, I think it’s a decent YA trilogy but like so many others, the beginning seems to be setting up […]



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