Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Listen, direct action—direct action is the third best feeling in the world.” “What’s the second?” “Peeling off a wet swimsuit.”

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

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This isn’t the oldest thing on my TBR–that honor probably goes to either of Arundhati Roy’s novels The God of Small Things or Ministry of Utmost Happiness–but it’s definitely a long simmering recommendation from Lydia. But once I read the blurb, it made it so hard to pick up. When is anyone in the mood for reading about 1980s and the height of the AIDS pandemic? Even if it is in Chicago, which isn’t one of the cities we usually associated with the time period? Ergo, the multiple […]

A Curious Story Indeed

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

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“I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.” I’m not sure what I expected from this book, but to say I was pleasantly surprised is putting it mildly.  This book languished on my TBR for over a decade.  I don’t know why I avoided it, but I just never got around to picking it up.  I ended up listening […]

Dance with a side of criminal profiling

The Spectacular by Fiona Davis

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Fiona Davis can always be relied upon to create a good story focused on historically inspired events and buildings set in New York. This one was a little bit different since both of the time lines focused on the same person, Marion Brooks, just about 36 years apart. Most of the other novels of hers I have read have had a larger gap in time and the person in the more recent time line is trying to figure out the mystery while the reader knows […]

Assassin’s Apprentice: The first of many Robin Hobb books for me in 2025

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb

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I devoured the Liveship trilogy last year, a series I picked up kind of on a whim. It was my favorite read(s?) of last year, so I was delighted when, immediately upon finishing the third book, I saw how many other books Robin Hobb has written. DELIGHTED. I decided to space them out so as to savor them like the delicacies that they are. I took a break for a few months and was 33% into Demon Copperhead by which, while so well written, was […]

A Bunch of Neanderthals

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

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Creation Lake, a very buzzy novel from last year, is a spy novel not content with “merely” being a spy novel. It’s protagonist is a freelance agent, currently on an assignment to infiltrate a commune of environmentalists living in the French countryside. She is meant to find out if they are planning any violent protests due to some recent pro-business policies put in place by the French government, or possibly to foment some plans if none are currently in the works. Not even the reader […]

The Monk – it is what it is

The Monk: A Romance by Matthew Lewis

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The Monk: a Romance by Matthew Lewis has vaguely been on my radar for years. When my husband was recently in the ER, I got it from Project Gutenberg and started reading because waiting in the hospital is both boring and unnerving. And I had a charger. What I like about horror is that it lets me explore the fun creepy things that I know are not at all a danger to me. I enjoy vampires because they are not real. I am far enough […]



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