Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


They already were trapped.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

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This is the case of a good idea already sort of perfected (or done so effectively) by a previous work that this one both feels derivative and cheap. It’s also the case where this one feels underserved by its brevity. So it’s a weird case of it’s not great and there’s not enough of it. The novel takes place on the wagon train of the Donner/Reed Party, famous for its mythic and mythologized end that may or may not have involved cannibalism after the party […]

A book I did not expect to hate.

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

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I think I mostly hated this? Yeah. I did. And I don’t really know why. I liked but didn’t love The Shining Girls when I read it a couple of years ago. I assumed I would similarly like not love this. And it does sound creepy and intriguing. A boy turns up dead in Detroit, his top half attached to the dead body of a deer. There are multiple narrators, including a detective on the case, a teenager, a journalist, and a homeless man. But […]

A new version of a classic short story from Neil Gaiman

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman

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I admit it, I am a Neil Gaiman fanboy. There are two shelves in my library devoted to his works and this short story, Snow Glass, Apples, sits among the greatest pieces he has created. So what is it about? Take the story of Snow White, keep all of the elements of the story we are familiar with (the stepmother, the dwarves, the stepmother’s attempt to kill Snow White, the Forest, etc.), then invert some, distort others and create a whole new perspective on a […]

No insurance money was forthcoming.

The Amulet by Michael McDowell

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This is a weird, unsavory, nasty horror novel from the late 1970s. It takes place in a small town in Alabama in the mid 1960s. The town is home to a munitions plants turned rifle factory, that supplies jobs for most of the citizens and rifles for the local army base, getting newly drafted soldiers ready to go to Vietnam. During a rifle practice session, a local boy is using one of those rifles when it misfires, explodes and horrifically injured him, destroying his face […]

DI Gravel is interesting, but I’m not sure he’s great at his job?

Portraits of The Dead (DI Gravel Book 1) by John Nicholl

A Cold Cold Heart (DI Gravel Book 3) by John Nicholl

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Shockingly I started the DI Gravel series at book number two!  It was actually really good (as far as I can remember).  I definitely remember liking DI Gravel as a character.  Like I said in the title though, I’m not sure he’s great as an investigator.  I don’t think he actually solved the crimes in the second book, and I don’t think he actually solved the crimes in this first book either. The bad dude kidnaps a college student named Emma and keeps her a […]

Something that happened in the ’80’s can be history, right?

Robert Pickton: The Pig Farmer Serial Killer (Crimes Canada: True Crimes That Shocked The Nation Book 1) by Chris Swinney

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So my friend got me started listening to a true crime podcast based on the most recent story she heard.  It was about a pig farmer named Robert Pickton.  He was apparently a semi-notorious Canadian serial killer.  I didn’t even know that Canada had serial killers! She told me about a book that they kept mentioning, but it was like $15 and I didn’t feel like spending any money that day, so I borrowed the Kindle Unlimited version of the story from Amazon.  Well, it […]



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