Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


The Revolutionary War in Three Volumes

Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick

Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick

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***This is a truly terrible review of three books.  If you like the Revolutionary War, read them.*** I first learned about Nathaniel Philbrick while doing research for a presentation on one of the commanders of the Battle of Bunker Hill, COL William Prescott.  While I planned to read the book then, I just did what most people do while preparing a presentation, I read only the things that were super relevant to the project.  I told myself for years that I would come back to […]

A choice between family and being your authentic self

Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu

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Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu isn’t quite a romance but digs into what it means to love. Lucky marries her gay friend Kris to appease her family and remain accepted by her Sri Lankan immigrant community in Boston. A marriage of convenience that works well on the surface. Everyone believes she married for love and escaped the fate of an arranged one. Kris and Lucky can be who they are together in LGBTQ spaces, taking home whoever they want. But things get […]

The Kind Worth Reading On a Beach When You’re Kinda Drunk and Not Thinking Too Hard

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    I added this book to my audiobook queue because it was recommended that if you liked Girl On The Train and Gone Girl you would also like this. It’s also supposedly in development to become a movie, but I read that same thing about The Lies of Locke Lamora about 20 years ago, and it STILL hasn’t happened and I’m STILL angry about it. Here’s the thing, I DID enjoy both GOTT and GG, and I can see why someone would recommend this […]

A fun but mostly disappointing sequel to Gone Baby Gone

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This sequel to the fabulous Gone Baby Gone was fun, but not up to its more famous predecessor. Baby Amanda is grown up and now a smart and precocious teen with an agenda all her own. Our favorite detective pair Patrick and Angie have gotten past the crisis of conscience that split them up 12 years earlier over Amanda’s earlier fate, and are now married with a daughter of their own, a more cautious approach to life, and a step away from bankruptcy. When Amanda […]

A new Lehane drama that I would call “Mystic River Lite”

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A bleak story filled with flawed individuals trying to survive in a flawed society, expertly written in the dark and violent tone of Mystic River but somehow lacking the heart and soul and depth of that brilliant novel. Lehane created The Drop from a screenplay, which in turn was forged from a short story Lehane had written but shelved a decade ago. The story centers around Bob Saginowski, an emotionally-damaged guy who tends bar in his cousin’s crime-linked pub, devoutly attends church services on Sundays, […]



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