Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site


Join Us June 24-25 for the Hot Fun in the Summertime Book Club! Get Details  
> FAQ Home
> Tag: CIA

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

by Leave a Comment

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 […]

A Brief History? Worth Every One of the 686 Pages.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

by 1 Comment

As I descend further into dad-hood, I find myself being more patient for longer books and movies. I mean, I recently sat through 3:15 of Barry Lyndon and loved almost every minute of it. So I figured it was finally time to tackle this one, a book which I must’ve started three or four times only to put off due to its length and a lack of patience trying to understand the Jamaican patois. Better late than never ’cause this book is great. I’m finding more and […]

June 2022 Leftovers

The Cage by Bonnie Kistler

Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg

Gone 'Til November by Wallace Stroby

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti

Survivor's Guilt by Robyn Gigl

The Old Man by Thomas Perry

Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy

The Drop by Michael Connelly

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw

Barbed Wire Heart by Tess Sharpe

Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

The Fury of Blacky Jaguar by Angel Luis Colón

He Kills Coppers by Jake Arnott

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

by Leave a Comment

I was dealing with work turmoil and on vacation for most of June so I didn’t get the chance to write as many in depth reviews as I’d have liked to. Which is a shame because some of these deserved a longer look; I just didn’t have the time or energy… The Cage **** I went back-and-forth on my review. I’ve been giving out a lot of 4-star reviews lately and considered docking the book for that reason since it’s very borderline. But the more I […]

The Book We Need For This Moment

Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman

by Leave a Comment

The best, simplest review I can give it is to quote from political operative Robert Wheel (@bobbybigwheel on Twitter): You know it’s a good book because every page pisses you off. I was 17 years old when we invaded Iraq. At the time, I was a champion for the war because I believed our government. Why would our government lie? Even as I began to question things in 2003 and 2004, I still voted for George W. Bush in my first presidential election. I was […]

When the CIA is trying to kill you, you try to kill them back!

A Death in Sweden by Kevin Wignall

by 1 Comment

I love spy and conspiracy thrillers, so this was right up my alley.  Plus, it was a Kindle First, so it was free! I can’t remember the main character’s name.  Nevermind, I just looked it up, it’s Dan.  It starts out with him finding a guy that he’s supposed to recover for his spy job.  I think the job was for the CIA, but he doesn’t actually work for the CIA.  I guess you could call him an independent contractor.  He actually feels sad once he […]

Jack Reacher in Europe, with an unexpected twist

Personal by Lee Child

by Leave a Comment

While I won’t claim it’s his best, or even that great, I found this latest (19th) Jack Reacher story an intriguing enough premise, a rapid page-turner (including the ballistics details which others found boring but which I enjoyed), a truly scary bad guy, and an unexpected punch-to-the-gut ending.   Someone has taken a long-distance shot at the French president, but special bullet-proof glass protected him from assassination. The CIA decides, along with Europe’s top intelligence agencies, that this was just a practice run aimed at […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo