Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch

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Every entry into Rivers of London starts with a splash; we are always diving head-first, sometimes literally, into rivers of blood. Every delightful cover, all done by Patrick Knowles, is a map with a big, red, bloody “X” marking the spot. Every cover is a map, every map is filled with teensy tiny detail, and every seemingly unrelated sketch or nursery rhyme lyric builds together into the marvelous mess that is London. I love his minute details; I feel like I’m looking at a Where’s Waldo illustration for […]

The Americas Deserved Better Than Guns, Germs, and Steel

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

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After watching John Leguizamo’s Netflix special Latin History for Morons, I felt a duty to learn more about the Hemisphere in which I live. I started with Mr. Leguizamo’s strongest recommendation: 1491, a 560-page tome with multiple appendices. The author isn’t a historian or archaeologist but a journalist who synthesizes all manner of information and makes it accessible.  The result is so compelling, so dense and riddled with shocks big and small that I suspended my usual speed-reading. Unexamined assumptions that I wasn’t even aware […]

So much yawn

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I got my degree in archaeology. Despite this, the Indiana Jones franchise has two of my favorite movies of all time. So, clearly, I’m not much of a stickler for authenticity in my fiction. Stretching the bounds of what happens in the real world is perfectly acceptable for me. Spin me a good yarn, and I’ll forgive the shortcuts. But I absolutely detest the expert who is equally well-versed in all things. You know the type. CSI popularized this, with their forensics experts engaging in […]



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