Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Hello, Old Friend

In the Midst of Death by Lawrence Block

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And so I come full circle with the Matthew Scudder series, for though my re-read will go into 2025 (if I’m fortunate to live that long), this was the first one I read, almost 15 years ago. It didn’t start me down the path. Like my impressions with the first two, I found it derivative. Alcoholic PI, knight errant ex-cop, dirty New York, women killed, etc. But on re-reads, I see what Block was doing. I’m not sure he intended to set up a series; […]

Death and Life and Wheelies

Jupiter's Travels by Ted Simon

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During the 2020 COVID quarantine period, my wife and I tried to mentally escape our confinement by watching travel shows. Our favorites were (1) Travel Man, hosted by Richard Ayoade and (2) Long Way motorcycle journey series, hosted by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman (yes, Ewan McGregor). Travel Man focuses on many of travel’s fun social/cultural aspects. In contrast, the Long Way motorcycle series focuses more on the wandering/open/adventure aspects. In one of the Long Way episodes, hosts Ewan and Charley are very excited to […]

It was a relief and a horror to be known so perfectly.

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

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I’m not sure if I can categorize this book as dark academia, but the characters and the story remind me so much of what I enjoyed about “If We Were Villains” and “The Secret History,” it is impossible for me not to draw parallels between them. All three stories are linked by a sudden and violent death, and how those left behind cope with their secrets. Paul is a seventeen-year-old who has recently graduated from high school. He lives with his mother and his two […]

The Great Crime Boom

San Francisco Homicide Inspector 5-Henry-7 by Frank Falzon, Duffy Jennings

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As a homicide inspector in San Francisco during the 1970s and 80s, Frank Falzon investigated some of the most famous crimes of the decade, including the Night Stalker serial murders and the Moscone-Milk assassinations. I came to this book in a pretty serendipitous way. I’d just listened to an episode of My Favorite Murder in which the one of the hosts covered a case discussed in this book, which she’d come across because her cousin was a colleague of Falzon’s. Just a day later, when I […]

Footballin’

About Three Bricks Shy of a Load by Roy Blount, Jr

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Something tangential to the book before I address the book itself… I’ve read several tongue-in-cheek books written by white men in the 1970s, of which this qualifies as one. America was dealing with the fallout from the 60s; Black people had made leaps and bounds in their rights but counterrevolutionary political forces stymied full growth. As such, the early-to-mid-70s presented a sort of post-transition time when white people were trying to understand an integrated world. And thus, many of the white male writers I read […]

May-July Leftovers

There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History by Rory Carroll

City of Dreams by Don Winslow

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Tripwire by Jack Reacher

Baby Moll by John Farris

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle

The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

X by Davey Davis

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship by Harvey Araton

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen

The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Ex Machina Book Four by Brian K. Vaughan

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite

Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell

The Crust on Its Uppers by Derek Raymond

That Kind of Danger by Donna Masini

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Spenser Confidential by Ace Atkins

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Weyward by Emilia Hart

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel by Ellen Raskin

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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I usually do these at the end of the month but then I went through a big reading slump March-May. And then I roared back but realized I was behind. So apologies for this being so long. There Will Be Fire **** A good, readable text on a moment in history I knew little about. Even after reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, I still had a lot of problem keeping track of all the socio-political dynamics so it’s good that Rory Carroll makes it accessible […]



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