Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

oops did I get two similar-ish books confused

The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra

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I think, if I’m being honest, that I did get this book slightly confused with Marra’s other book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Which isn’t to say both books aren’t lovely and worthy of being read, just that they do share common traits. Marra writes what he knows best. I can’t fault an author for doing so, and indeed I really enjoyed both books. Perhaps on further reflection I might have enjoyed this one a tad more? In this work, a central painting–a fictional landscape by […]

recommendation from aileen!

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

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Recommendation from Aileen! I suppose some mild spoiler alerts for what this book apparently is–thinly veiled shade towards Ted Bundy, who was once called by a judge a “bright young man,” in the vein of all the usual misogyny that we’re used to seeing in the judicial system when faced with the fact that yet another (male) murderer who seemed so normal has gone off the rails. I didn’t really know this part, and honestly I couldn’t really tell you much about Ted Bundy so […]

The Stickler’s Guide to Science in the Age of Misinformation: The Real Science Behind Hacky Headlines, Crappy Clickbait, and Suspect Sources

The Stickler’s Guide to Science in the Age of Misinformation: The Real Science Behind Hacky Headlines, Crappy Clickbait, and Suspect Sources by R. Philip Bouchard

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The Stickler’s Guide to Science in the Age of Misinformation is an excellent little foray into how to dig deeper than the headlines, which means a lot of people should read it. It’s a little pedantic at times, but since science is all about the details and the pursuit of “hmm, what else?” this makes sense. I don’t want to write an in depth review on this, in part because I’m feeling lazy and in part because the point of reading a book like this […]

The past and the present walk into a bar

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

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Slough House: a grimy station across from London’s Barbican Estate, tucked away above a Chinese restaurant that’s perpetually closed. It’s where MI5-rejects are sent in the hopes that they will quit, thus saving the service the headache of firing them. Against all odds, it has been drafted in protecting a visiting Russian oligarch with whom the British government is interested in striking a deal, or at least set up some sort of connection the way governments do. Two Slow Horses are ordered to babysit, though […]

Can Travis master the Legendary Sword of Legends and fulfill his cosmic destiny? Without his parents learning he isn’t at fencing practice?

Travis Daventhorpe Powers Up! by Wes Molebash

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After a couple of more edgier titles, and a biography/memoir of Andy Warhol, I wanted something light to read. I found in my online reader copies Travis Daventhorpe Powers Up! by Wes Molebash. This is the second book in the series.  Since both volumes are currently available, I recommend reading them as closely together as possible, as there were several pieces I had forgotten about book one. Besides, it is fun to see how they pick up where we left off in book one. All the […]

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Paris

Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

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About a year ago, I read and reviewed Swann’s Way, which is the first volume of Proust’s (in)famous Remembrance of Things Past. In the first book, the narrator is a young boy, trying to make sense of the world of adults. Surprisingly, a lot of that book is about Swann, an adult socialite a neighbor of the narrator’s family. Swann makes some rather unorthodox choices in his love life, and the narrator’s family feels the ripples of those choice. Within a Budding Grove is the […]



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