Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

CBR15 Bingo: Edibles

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

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CBR15 Bingo: Edibles (this book features both a lot of food and quite a few drugs) Lila Macapagal used to live in Chicago and dreamed of opening her own restaurant, but both her business and relationship failed miserably. She’s back in her hometown, helping to run her tita (aunt) Rosie run the family restaurant, where they serve Philipino food. Unfortunately, Lila’s ex-boyfriend is a food critic and seems determined to come back, again and again, to sample the food and write scathing things about the […]

Of butterflies and spirits

A Blanket of Butterflies (The Spirit of Denendeh Volume One) by Richard Van Camp

As I Enfold You in Petals (The Spirit of Denendeh, Volume 2). by Richard Van Camp

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A while back I found a reader copy request form. After asking and receiving it, I realized it was book two. I did find book one, but never got around to reading it. After receiving the second book, there was still no reading of it. I only realized why I had the delay the night I read them. They are books that must be read “at the right time,” otherwise you will not be ready for them. The books were A Blanket of Butterflies (The […]

January 2023 Leftovers

Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly

Queen of Thieves by Beezy Marsh

Anxious People by Frederick Backman

The Dead Season by Tessa Wegert

A Diet of Treacle by Lawrence Block

The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports by Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg

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Here are brief reviews for the books I read in 2023 that I either didn’t have time to review or that didn’t merit 250 words… Two Kinds of Truth*** First new read of 2023! I continue to plow through the Bosch series. I enjoyed most of what I read recently but this was just blah. Boring, predictable dueling plots, though one is resolved with an interesting twist. Read better, read worse in this series. Looking forward to getting to some of the Renee Ballard books. […]

If the “them apples” guy wrote a book, this would be it.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

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What do Usher and St. Augustine have in common? I enjoyed their Confessions more than Thomas De Quincey’s. (Also, both Usher and Augustine were both great dancers in their prime.) There have probably been books that were more disappointing to me that Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, but I can’t think of any right now. Mr. De Quincey’s Confessions first made itself known to me through Nick Tosches’ The Last Opium Den. That book was less about opium and more about the search for something […]

Have you heard of Pervitin?

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

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One of the weirdest things that’s happened to me as an adult is that I’ve learned how fluid “history” can be. Growing up, my understanding of the concept of history was that smart people figured out what happened, and they told us, and that was it. In college books like Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People’s History of the United States opened up my thinking to the idea that any narrative (historical or otherwise) comes from a point of view and has a […]

January 2022 Leftovers

Hit Parade by Lawrence Block

Sex Criminals, Volume 1: One Weird Trick by Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky

Devils In Exile by Chuck Hogan

Ex Machina, The Deluxe Edition: Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

Munich by Robert Harris

Shella by Andrew Vachss

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz

No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfeld

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

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My resolution for Cannonball Read in 2022 is to only write reviews where I feel like I have much to say and then dump the others in a singular post at the end of the month to track how much I’ve read. This’ll spare me from writing 250+ words about books that I can’t even think of a hundred for. So… Hit Parade **** I enjoy these books and while this is the one I maybe enjoyed the least (did EVERY story need cutaway conversations with […]



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