Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don’t know.”

Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #6) by Louise Penny

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I’m officially hooked on this series. With the exception of books two and three, which I thought were dips in quality, this series just keeps getting better. Part of my enjoyment comes from this being essentially now a serialized story. The first four you could pick up out of order and still get everything out of them that Penny wanted you to. But this one almost entirely depends, narratively and emotionally, on the previous five books, but mostly the fifth. Spoilers for previous books to follow. We ended the last book with Olivier being arrested for the murder of the […]

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1/8/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:5 |

I have now conquered the complete Sherlock Holmes.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #9) by Arthur Conan Doyle

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I’m glad he went for one more round. I liked all of these better than the ones in His Last Bow. Because I’m fast running out of review posting time, I’m copying and pasting all my mini-reviews for this book. I will hopefully put up a real review on Goodreads HERE within the next couple of days, and also a full review of The Complete Sherlock Holmes HERE. I’m not posting it on CBR because I’ve already counted all nine books to my tally this year. – – – December 18, 2018 – 88.0% ““The Adventure of the Illustrious Client” […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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12/31/2018 's CBR10 Review No:172 |

Detective Novel from Morocco, kind of a mixed bag

Whitefly: A Novel by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

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Whitefly is a short detective novel by Moroccan writer Abdelilah Hamdouchi. Hamdouchi writes crime fiction and has had success as a screen writer of police thrillers. This novel was first published in Arabic in 2000 and translated by Jonathan Smolin in 2016. It is a noir-ish story of bodies washed up on the shore in Tangier. Are the deaths related? And why does one of the bodies have gunshot wounds? Detective Khalid Ibrahim, aka Laafrit, must rely on his instincts and connections both in the police world and on the gritty streets of Tangier to find the gun and piece […]

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12/8/2018 's CBR10 Review No:50 |

“You are the one fixed point in a changing age.”

His Last Bow: Some Later Reminisces of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #8) by Arthur Conan Doyle

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This is the shortest Holmes story collection: only eight stories and a preface written by Watson, explaining that Holmes is now retired to Sussex and keeping bees, and here are some stories he hasn’t yet published about their adventures, including their very last one. (All the stories in the last published book, The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes, apparently take place before “His Last Bow” as well.) Because of the shortness, you feel it a little bit more when a story is a dud. In particular, I thought the first, double-length story, “The Adventure on Wisteria Lane,” was a bit dull. […]

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11/30/2018 's CBR10 Review No:157 |

Somehow this series still works.

A Letter of Mary (Mary Russell, #3) by Laurie R. King

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This one started out really strong for me, and then petered out near the end, for a couple of reasons, which I will be marking in spoiler tags. Mary and Holmes continue to be a great pair, and I find their cerebral marriage a compelling one, though I am beginning to get a bit annoyed with King for discounting Watson so much. Here, we meet an old friend from the first book, the archaeologist Dorothy Ruskin, who shows up in Sussex for a visit, and leaves Mary and Holmes with a strange parchment, which appears to have been written by […]

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11/29/2018 's CBR10 Review No:150 |

Probably my least favorite of these books.

The Valley of Fear (Sherlock Holmes, #7) by Arthur Conan Doyle

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I liked this, I did. But the first half was just an extended Holmes story (a pretty good one!), while the second half was basically pointless. I don’t think this should have been a full length novel. The content of the story just doesn’t justify it. The Valley of Fear was published in full in 1915 (after being serialized in The Strand of course), so by this point, Conan Doyle had been writing the character for almost thirty years. (This was also around the time Conan Doyle started getting super into spiritualism, and about five years before he started believing […]

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11/28/2018 's CBR10 Review No:140 |

“Holmes,” I cried. “Is it really you?”

The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #6) by Arthur Conan Doyle

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While gathering my thoughts to start writing this review, I kept getting the feeling that this was my favorite of the Holmes story collections so far. With this feeling in mind, I moseyed on over to Goodreads to look at my status updates to try to collect evidence to back it up (I rate and do mini-reviews for every story), whereupon I found to my surprise that my reaction to most of the stories was just good, not great. It’s a solid story collection! However, only two out of the thirteen stories I liked enough to really remember and have fond feelings for. […]

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10/31/2018 's CBR10 Review No:131 |

“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #4) by Arthur Conan Doyle

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So I’ve been reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels since January now, and I’ve been having a great time with the audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry (especially since my version also has these little personal essays written by Fry at the beginning of each novel or collection). But I think I might have done myself a little disservice by listening to this one in audio. I’ve read it before, when I was in grade school I think, but the only part I remembered was SPOILERS when they discover the dog had been painted in phosphorous (except my memory […]

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8/29/2018 's CBR10 Review No:105 |


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