Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Marriage and friendship in middle age

Good Company by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

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This book crept up and grabbed me by the heart, in the best possible way. Good Company centers around the relationships between four friends, in two married couples. Flora and Margot, were roommates in New York in their twenties, both working actors. Flora meets and marries Julian, another actor. Margot marries David, a pediatric surgeon. “Good Company” is the name of the small theater company that Julian and, to a lesser extent, Flora, run. Twenty years later, Flora and Julian have moved to LA with […]

Redeemable trust fund kids

The Nest by Cynthia d'Aprix Sweeney

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I have had this mint green brick sitting on my shelf for years- passed on by a friend, I knew that it was a bestseller, likely to be turned into a movie or tv show, and for some reason it always felt like something I ‘should’ read rather than what I wanted to read. Reader, I was wrong! The Nest is a story about the four adult Plumb siblings who are months away from inheriting a reasonably-sized trust fund when a self-made disaster strikes: Leo, […]

Meet the Plumbs

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

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My memory from the last few years is hazy but if I recall correctly, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s 2016 novel The Nest was one of the breakout hits of the literary year. I remember seeing it everywhere and hearing about its existence, even if I didn’t know the plot. A little research confirmed at least some of this: the book sold for 7-figures to a publishing house and there were like a billion (very available) copies at my local libraries. This no doubt was a hit with the […]

It’s a familyyyyy traditiiiiion (of dysfunction)

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Four siblings are eager to inherit what they affectionately refer to as “The Nest” from their late father. He worked hard his whole life, pinching and living a modest live, and his intention was to provide a modest bump for his children, but his investment practices and a favorable market have swollen the amount beyond what he could have imagined. But, when the eldest sibling’s bad decisions finally catch up with him, they all pay the consequences, literally. Now the nest is almost depleted, and […]

“People abandoned one another constantly without performing the courtesy of of actually disappearing.”

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This book passed the rarest of tests: I often bring a book somewhere in case I have a wait or a gap of time and have a chance to read. I’ve done it since childhood, but the habit doesn’t really make sense anymore. I have an almost 3 year old who needs constantly, never-ending attention, intervention, corralling, chasing, and supervision. On the rare occasions that I do actually have a second in public, it’s 100,000,000x easier to just browse Facebook on my phone or something. […]

The Love of Money

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The Nest is a book about how money makes you do terrible things. I initially almost stopped reading it at about the 20% mark because the characters we’re introduced to at that point can easily be summed up with “assholes gonna asshole” and who wants to read that? Fortunately the characters are a bit more nuanced then that, and I was ultimately glad that I continued reading. The plot follows four siblings through one year of their lives. In this particular year, they were supposed […]



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