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Trudging through Drudgery

The Ritual by Mo Hayder

Magnus by Arjen Lubach

November 30, 2022 by Zirza Leave a Comment

The Ritual (Mo Hayder) ***½ When it comes to thrillers and crime fiction, I’m stuck in a quandary in the sense that I usually like the idea better than the execution. My main problem is that so many books within the genre seem so badly written: the characters are flat, the prose is hokey and the authors always seem to want to outdo each other by coming up with either the goriest or the most outlandish plots. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but […]

January 2022 Leftovers

Hit Parade by Lawrence Block

Sex Criminals, Volume 1: One Weird Trick by Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky

Devils In Exile by Chuck Hogan

Ex Machina, The Deluxe Edition: Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

Munich by Robert Harris

Shella by Andrew Vachss

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz

No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfeld

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

February 2, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

My resolution for Cannonball Read in 2022 is to only write reviews where I feel like I have much to say and then dump the others in a singular post at the end of the month to track how much I’ve read. This’ll spare me from writing 250+ words about books that I can’t even think of a hundred for. So… Hit Parade **** I enjoy these books and while this is the one I maybe enjoyed the least (did EVERY story need cutaway conversations with […]

This isn’t your father’s Jungle Book…..

Sengi and Tembo by G. Falco

December 17, 2021 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

FYI: I have some not fort his book images becaue I can and I like them! If Animal Farm and A Tale of Two Cities created a book together, the graphic novel Sengi and Tembo by G. Falco (or Giuseppe Falco) probably would be the results. Rebellion, status quo, life, and the ultimate equalizer death all come together in a dark, somewhat comedic commentary on not only how things should be but can become. Sengi is a young mouse that quickly learns the dangers of […]

A monumental achievement that mostly worked like I thought it would

Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley

October 15, 2021 by ingres77 Leave a Comment

I was shocked to see that this book had only been reviewed one time for Cannonball Read. My cultural frame of reference for this show is that it came out before my time, was one of the biggest shows in the history of television. The show premiered in January of 1977 and Part I garnered a 40.5 share. The show was aired over the course of a single week because CBS was afraid it was going to be a bust, and preferred one bad week […]

“And it wasn’t fair. That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories unscathed, thriving. Some people don’t.”

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

September 13, 2021 by ardaigle 1 Comment

In one word: Grieving Cannonball Read Bingo: Uncannon I picked this for uncannon because Gyasi is giving new life to a story that we’ve seen many times over from the Eurocentric white perspective. There have been plenty of books about drug addiction (even specifically about Oxycontin and the havoc it is wreaking in America), mental illness, the crossroads of science and religion in academia, and an overachieving character trying to fix her heart by using her head. She is taking very familiar tropes and given […]

“This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves.”

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

June 20, 2021 by ardaigle 7 Comments

I am finally getting around to read my second Cannonball Read book exchange gift book this year from Bonnie (thanks Bonnie!) I don’t know what took me so dang long because I loved the first book she gave me, Red White and Royal Blue, and it wasn’t even on my radar to read, and neither was Homegoing and I should have known that Bonnie knows her book business and BOY. DOES. SHE. Homegoing is definitely in my top books of the year, and one I’m […]

ElCicco on Tom Joad needs a bathIs your mom reading Sanora Babb’s “Whose Names Are Unknown”? I just read about her recently. She’d worked for the Farm Security Admin during the...
Emmalita on Two Households, Both Alike in DignityI've just realized that I have never read All My Sons. I just copy pasted the plot of Death of a Salesman into my mental...
katie71483 on For such a warm title, this one left me coldSo frustrating!
Flimflamingo on When You Don’t Know What To Do, Sometimes a Cup of Tea Is the Right Place To Start.I read the title and was sure you were writing about Becky Chambers' Robot and Monk novellas. LOL. I have a feeling I'm adding this...
MsWas on When You Don’t Know What To Do, Sometimes a Cup of Tea Is the Right Place To Start.LOVE this book title, will have to look for it. Are you doing a tea-themed CBR15?

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Trudging through Drudgery

January 2022 Leftovers

A monumental achievement that mostly worked like I thought it would

“And it wasn’t fair. That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories unscathed, thriving. Some people don’t.”

“This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves.”

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