Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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August 2022 Leftovers

Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy

Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself by K.C. Constantine

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris

Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees by Bob Klapisch and Pete Solotaroff

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Finley Ball: How Two Outsiders Turned the Oakland As into a Dynasty and Changed Baseball Forever by Nancy Finley

Sea Change by Robert B. Parker

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

Ms. Tree, Volume 1 by Max Alan Collins

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Some extra books I read in August. What a miserably hot month… Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood**** Less a conventional biopic on The Mick and more a look at his life vis-a-vis his legend and the backdrop of postwar America. Not as thorough as I would’ve liked but still riveting given how Jane Leavy presents her subject.   Greenwich Park*** Again glad I slept on my review. I really liked how this started but after a while, it morphed into […]

They’re Out!

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof

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Read as part of CBR14Bingo: Scandal. The 1919 World Series was scandalized by eight members of the Chicago White Sox agreeing to throw it as part of a gambling conspiracy.  Bill James is a legend among baseball fans. His greatest rep is as the Analytics Guy but my first taste of his work was his text on the Hall of Fame, in which he critiques the process by which people enter. James devoted a chapter to baseball’s most famous banned people: Pete Rose and Shoeless […]

Double Play

Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original by Howard Bryant

The House that Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the First Yankee Championship, and the Redemption of 1923 by Robert Weintraub

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Thanks to watching The Captain, I’ve been on a baseball kick lately. This past week, I read two really good books that deserved to be fleshed out here. Rickey I’ve always been fascinated with Rickey Henderson, the player. A combination of speed and power made him the best leadoff hitter and stolen base champ in history. I always admired how instead of acting too proud to end his career with some hokey narrative, he kept playing independent ball, hoping to be signed.  I know less about […]

Legends of the Fall

October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees' Miraculous Finish of 1978 by Roger Kahn

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As I get older, I make it a habit of going through books I once read or half read back in my teens and 20s. It’s amazing the perspective age gives you. I’m more patient of a reader and I notice more things and appreciate them. Roger Kahn is one of those baseball scribes I’ve always had mixed feelings on. He’s written some good stuff but his fascination with the Brooklyn Dodgers has helped cultivate this cottage industry around the team like they’re some kind […]

Home Run Time

R.B.I. Robots (Fuzzy Baseball, #3) by John Steven Gurney

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cbr14bingo,  Funky Funky meanings: having an earthy, blues-based quality or character. having an offensive smell; evil smelling; foul. adjective funkier or funkiest informal (of music) passionate, soulful; of or pertaining to funk authentic; earthy stylish and exciting; cool, funky jeans overcome with great fear; terrified. John Steven Gurney (whom I missed when he came to my store due to a headache I was fighting) has a great baseball series called Fuzzy Baseball. I have read them out of order, which mostly is okay, but I […]

“The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.”

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 14/30 After sitting on it for over a month, I think I’m going to chalk this one up to being the wrong book at the wrong time for me. When I do my eventual Full Stephen King Re-Read™ I’m hoping I will enjoy it more. (This won’t be for ages. I’ve still got about half his back catalog to go the first time around.) I was telling myself the story of this book before writing this review, […]



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