Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


The Worst Party Crashers Ever

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

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The government of a South American country believes they can convince a Japanese business to build a new factory in their country and boost their sagging economy. They invite him to celebrate his birthday in their capital, and have arranged a unique and personal gift for the occasion: his favorite opera singer will be in attendance and give a private performance for the occasion. Though Mr. Hosokawa has no intention of building the factory they want, he can’t turn down the chance to meet Roxanne […]

Fixer-Upper

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

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The titular house is an old mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs, where Danny Conroy and his older sister Maeve grew up with their father Cyril, an emotionally distant real-estate magnate. Their mother is off in parts unknown, having left when Danny was a very young boy. Maeve picks up their father’s slack and become a sort of second mother to Danny, far more so than the woman Cyril makes his second wife. Their stepmother comes into the marriage with two daughters of their own, and her […]

Our Town, Is a Very, Very, Very Small Town

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

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On a cherry farm in Michigan, a family unexpectedly reunited by the COVID pandemic struggles to find ways to pass the time until their father drops a bombshell revelation: the handsome actor in the old favorite movie they’re watching used to be their mother’s boyfriend. Pressed into recounting the tale, 57-year-old Lara spins a yarn about a long ago summer spent putting on Our Town at a local theater company and falling in love with her co-star. Intrigued by the connection to a celebrity or […]

Another take on memory

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

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I am beginning to sense another trope I seek out in books and enjoy – a woman (person, but I typically enjoy it best if it’s a woman) looks back on some moment of her early life, usually involving a relationship in her late teens or early 20s. Ann Patchet’s Tom Lake fits in that genre. This book, probably the most soothing pandemic book I’ve read yet, was such an interesting book to read shortly after The Rachel Incident, another book in that “woman looks […]

A wonderful exploration of a dysfunctional family spanning 50 years

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

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Set in Philadelphia over the course of about 50 years, The Dutch House tracks the lives of Cyril and Elna Conroy, their children Maeve and Danny, and Danny’s children May and Kevin. Cyril left the military after WWII and through a little bit of luck and a whole lot of having the right knowledge and the right time, ends up turning a couple investments into a vast real estate empire that nets him enough money to afford a beautiful mansion in Philadelphia. He buys the […]

a thousand apologies and what feels like a thousand reviews (through November 2023)

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Kindred by Octavia E Butler

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hinumegin er mars by Sólrun Michelsen

Trust by Hernan Diaz

How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't by Ian Dunt

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It by Owen Jones

In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomás González

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The City & the City by China Miéville

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin

Passion Simple by Annie Ernaux

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers

The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon

A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas

Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within by Rory Stewart

Rivals by Katherine McGee

Reign by Katherine McGee

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

The Iliad by Homer, Emily Wilson

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

10 Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy

A Little Life by Hanya Yanighara

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

The Starting Over Game by girl_with_kaleidoscope_eyes

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Edinburg by Alexander Chee CBR15: Sex True fact, when someone British asked me what I was reading I pronounced this “Edin-BERG” and to their credit they didn’t laugh but instead asked, with some horrified sincerity, if that’s how Americans say it. It’s not! At least, not on purpose. It’s just how can the English language claim to have been invented in a country that seems to not have grasped even a shred of understanding of how the various letters in it work? I digress. This is […]



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