Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A magical love letter to NYC

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

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New York City has been born as a great city of the world and she has chosen her avatar. This happens from time to time as enough people and ideas coalesce in one spot. It happened to Rio de Janerio, to Hong Kong, to London, and many more. And now it’s happening to New York. Except this time, one single person is not embodying the entire city like has always been the case. Instead there is an additional avatar for each of the five boroughs […]

Merry Christmas!

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

The Girl With the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block

Cold Shot to the Heart by Wallace Stroby

Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League by Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo

All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortune of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty by Jonathan Pearson

The Blonde on the Street Corner by David Goodis

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Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! Having been busy with Christmas prep, avoiding Delta and Omicron, and other various things, I haven’t had the time to write long, 250+ reviews for these books. I figured I’d just cram them all here since I know I won’t finish Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate before New Year’s Eve. The Fortress of Solitude *** This clears the 3-star threshold but just barely. I appreciate what Lethem is trying to do here and I usually enjoy his work. But this was a […]

Waiting to Die

Shoot the Moonlight Out by William Boyle

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William Boyle has done it again. I don’t know if he’ll ever write anything as delightfully manic as A Friend Is A Gift You Give Yourself. But as long as he keeps doing these Brooklyn-based character driven crime stories, I’m a happy reader. This one is familiar if you’ve read his others but you don’t need to in order to dive in. They’re loosely connected so you can start anywhere. Boyle uses the template of a crime novel to create a world of south Brooklyn that he […]

But You Can’t Take the Neighborhood Out of You

Gravesend by William Boyle

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: White Whale  And so I circle back to the beginning of William Boyle’s catalog, with his new one Shoot the Moonlight Out already in hand. I tried reading Gravesend multiple times over the years. But it didn’t stick. It reminded me of George Pelecanos’ work, which I admire more than enjoy: character-focused neighborhood-centric stories in which crime just randomly happens and people get drawn in because they can’t escape their circumstances. Those books always sound like fun more than they read like it. At […]

Fear in the Borough

Brooklyn Noir by ed. Tim McLoughlin

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This is the OG of the Akashic noir series, a series I greatly enjoy, being both a city lover and a fan of mystery/noir tales. I don’t always like short stories. I enjoy a book that I can really sink my teeth into, a plot that grips me, an argument to be made in non-fiction. These are usually my exception to the rule. I used to make fun of Brooklyn a lot. It’s become synonymous with gentrification, upper-middle and upper-class whites inhabiting working class neighborhoods, […]

Mary Dixie Carter’s The Photographer

The Photographer by Mary Dixie Carter

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Another scary, psychological thriller with an unwell woman at the center (and a person on the cover #cbr13bingo). Delta Dawn is a photographer in New York City, and she spends most of her time taking photos of children’s birthday parties having discovered her knack for making children look happy and healthy and like their parents’ dreams.  She routinely photoshops images that are less than perfect to fulfill the fantasy these wealthy families pay her to portray. When she meets the Straub family, Delta feels she […]



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