Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“When the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?”

Cruddy by Lynda Barry

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Lynda Barry is best known for her comics work, but I also really love her two illustrated novels (Cruddy and The Good Times Are Killing Me), which it seems to me are somewhat overlooked (or maybe I was too young when they came out to notice their cultural impact). All her work deals with outsider teens who are dealing with abusive parents and societal alienation with no one to help them. Cruddy is a very bleak, blackly comic novel. I like the journal-type format that it uses, as […]

Worth your time, but maybe not the lingering headache

The Treatment by Mo Hayder

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Crime fiction is an odd thing. Visit your average thriller-horror-Facebook group and you’ll regularly find people looking for books that portray the extremes of human behaviour. “The sicker the better”, as they put it. Weirdly, The Treatment by Mo Hayder is not one that pops up very often – possibly because it’s about 20 years old – but in all honesty, this book is intense. We didn’t believe in Trigger Warnings in 2022 but this book could do with a couple of them.  On a […]

“Winston was the only person Randolph truly loved.”

Churchill & Son by Josh Ireland

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If I say “this book was a lot better than I thought it was going to be,” I definitely run the risk of sounding rude, but I was very pleasantly surprised by Churchill & Son. I’m not a politics book type of person, as I tend to find them too dry, but Ireland has written a very engaging and interesting book that deals with a lot of politics in a readable and nuanced way. I was never bored or forcing myself to push through a section […]

It’s Set in Scotland. Of Course it’s Bleak.

Knots and Crosses (Inspecor Rebus #1) by Ian Rankin

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Edinburgh, 1986. A number of young girls disappear. They’re abducted seemingly randomly, strangled and their corpses abandoned. All of Edinburgh’s police force is on top of it and so is John Rebus, a chain smoking, hard drinking former marine who now works as a burnt-out office drone for Edinburgh’s constabulary. It’s not that he doesn’t care, but the work he does is monotonous and neverending, and he’s far away from the action – at least, he thinks so. But someone keeps sending him letters, letters […]

I’d rather not

Look for me by Lisa Gardner

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On a pleasant spring day, Detective D.D. Warren is called in from a day out with her husband and son to investigate a quadruple homicide. A family of four has been shot and killed in their home. A fifth member, eldest daughter Roxy, is still missing along with the family’s two dogs. As she’s seen fleeing the crime scene, the question immediately rises whether Roxy escaped in a panic, or whether she’s involved with the murder.  Let me start with the essential part here: the […]

Not all rainbows in these celebrity memoirs

We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union

Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) by Rosie Perez

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I read We’re Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union for my last in-person Mocha Girls Read meeting in March. This memoir is a collection of moments that are mostly linear with some flashbacks. Unlike Becoming, the chapters are not as detailed about her early childhood. The book is all about keeping it real and reflecting on her past with levity. We learn about her family and how she at a young age she looked after herself. With no supervision, Gabrielle got up to some […]



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