Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

My Favorite Maisie Dobbs So Far

An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear

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The story: Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator in London in the time period between the world wars. In An Incomplete Revenge, an acquaintance hoping to buy some property in a small village asks her to investigate a series of mysterious fires in the village. The mystery is complicated by the fact that the town is full of non-residents who are there for hop-picking season–Londoners like Maisie’s assistant Billy and his family, as well as a group of Roma (be warned that in the book, Roma […]

Unlikable Characters Doing Inexplicable Things

Tell Me Who You Are by Louisa Luna

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The story: Dr. Caroline Strange is a psychiatrist in Brooklyn. She has a very inflated sense of self-worth, believing she knows what’s best for everyone, and gives all of her patients cutesy, cringy, cruel nicknames like Tawdry Twyla and Weepy Jasmine. One morning a new patient arrives, tells her, “I’m going to kill someone, and I know who you really are,” and walks out. This sets off twin storylines, narrated by three different characters–1) Caroline in the present, trying to figure out who this guy […]

A different kind of horror

Audition by Ryu Murakami

Piercing by Ryu Murakami

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Audition (1997) – 4 stars I think I talked about this in a past review, but I was a huge movie buff in college. My girlfriend at the time and I particularly loved Japanese horror, and this was the height of that particular genre, with Ringu, Ju-on, and a slew of other movies. One of the better films of the era was a quiet little movie called Audition. I loved it so much, I bought the book and first read it close to twenty years […]

A perfect little novel

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

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Growing up in the 1980s and 90s, the son of Boomer parents, I collected baseball cards. It was a hobby my father and I enjoyed together. Like many of his generation, my father amassed a collection of cards that, today, would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, like many of his generation, they were all thrown away when he joined the military and moved away from home. Trying to rekindle that magic, as many parents do, he started buying them again when he […]

A nice anthology of mildly gruesome stories

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

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This is an anthology of interconnected short stories that takes place in Tokyo in an indeterminate time, but presumably sometime in the 1990s. Each of the stories (of which there are eleven) is from the perspective of a different character, and shares some commonality to the story that immediately precedes it. In “Afternoon at the Bakery”, for instance, the narrator enters a bakery for some strawberry shortcake. It’s her son’s birthday who (it is revealed) is now dead. That is what his last birthday cake […]

I’m crying because I was just in a bloody battle. I hated every second of it and I would not recommend it to a friend.

Gwen & Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

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“Studying for what?” “Um. Everything? My future,” Gabriel said. Arthur’s instinct was to laugh, but he managed to keep himself in check. “You’re studying for life? For your life? Is there a—is there a how-to guide for monarchs? Tips and tricks for subjugating the masses? Prevent a revolt in ten easy steps?” ― Lex Croucher, Gwen & Art Are Not in Love “If you wanted to come and find me, I’ve actually been pretty stationary. You know. Nearly dying.” ― Lex Croucher, Gwen & Art […]



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