Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Letters from the Winter of Life

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

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I almost wish I had waited until January to read this, so I could start my year with a 5-star read, which this was—absolutely and unexpectedly. The idea of an epistolary novel rarely appeals to me, but I’m so glad I gave this one a try. Our main letter writer is Sybil, who is 73 when the book starts, but it spans several years. She writes to just about anyone and everyone, including her brother, a neighbor, the son of a former colleague, a customer […]

Wherever You Go, There You Are

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett

Kiss Her Goodbye by Lisa Gardner

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CBR17 Bingo: Migrant – Both books involve characters who move to places they expect no one knows them and try, with varying success, to rebuild themselves into new shapes. The Killer Question by Janice Hallett – 5 stars Sue and Mal run a perfectly average British pub with an above average weekly quiz night, but the arrival of a mysterious new team that dominates the competition and the discovery of a body in the nearby river sends their lives into a tailspin. This is my […]

“look, I know you don’t believe me when I say I’m imprisoned in our slack workplace”

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

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CBR14Bingo: Rec’d (I recommend this one! Fast and excellent skewering of Slack/work culture in 2022) This is one of those books that hit me at the exact right time. As someone who is constantly on Slack for work, I am still thinking about perfectly it skewered the grim experience of corporate tech chat messaging. Throughout the day today I was struck by how well he satirized various interactions. Several People are Typing gets everything about the tone and the purgatorial aspect of this platform while […]

“I felt sad and a whole lot better at the same time:” Truly a Timeless Classic!

Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary

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I was really going wild at the bookstore over epistolary novels last week and picked up Dear Mr. Henshaw, a book I hadn’t read in a super long time (maybe 20 years?). Happy to say that it holds up and is just as wonderful as I remember! It’s always weird reading a book you read a lot as a kid and seeing it through the eyes of an adult. I was struck by how big the print is, which I didn’t remember at all, and it […]

I love epistolary novels but had a major issue with this one

The Jigsaw Jungle by Kristin Levine

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I am a sucker for an epistolary novel, and this one is told in a combination of notes, transcripts, drawings, and so on to give it a sense that it’s a scrapbook. The Jigsaw Jungle follows Claudia’s quest to figure out why her father has vanished. One evening he sends an email saying he will be home late and then never returns. Claudia’s mother then has to go on a work trip to Switzerland and Claudia ends up staying with her grandfather for two weeks while […]

84, Charing Cross Road for baseball fans

Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger

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Last Days of Summer tells the story of a friendship between Joey Margolis, a Jewish kid growing up in 1940s Brooklyn, and Charlie Banks, a third-baseman for the New York Giants. Joey’s father is completely absent from his life, and it ain’t easy being the Jewish kid at school without a dad (he gets beat up a lot). As a result, Joey acts out, gets himself thrown into juvie for peeing in the reservoir, and embarks on a relentless campaign to get the attention of […]



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