Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Gentleman Gangster

Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin by Lee Server

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Ever since I read Don Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine last year, I’ve been obsessed with SoCal mobster tales. Martin Scorsese came close to adapting Frankie Machine before he was seduced by Charles Brandt’s inferior I Heard You Paint Houses, which he turned into The Irishman. If Scorsese had wanted to do a lion-in-winter mafia tale, I wish he had done Frankie or a movie on Rosselli’s life. Both of which are more interesting than another northeastern gangster story. Lee Server is an expert on pop history, with bios of Ava Gardner and […]

Reading, Reading, Reading

Broken Places by Tracy Clark

The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie

Solos by Kitty Burns Florey

The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton

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Finishing off the year right with another round of great crime fiction… Broken Places 4 stars A really good debut novel that’s pure Chicago without being annoying. A little predictable towards the end but well-written nonetheless. Also, much love for featuring black Roman Catholicism, which is a different expression than the commonly mass produced (re:white) Roman Catholicism of crime novels and movies.   The A.B.C. Murders 4 stars This one was about to highlight why I’m not a big Christie fan, despite usually enjoying her novels. Whereas […]

cbr12bingo – Happy!

Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms by John Hodgman

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“Hey, it’s John Hodgman!” John Hodgman used to spend a considerable amount of time on TV. He’s played, in his words, all sorts of “sexless weirds” in TV and commercials alike. He spent time on The Daily Show as, among other things, a deranged billionaire. He left his Daily Show role behind as Trump rose to power, as there is nothing funny anymore about criminally insane rich people.  He isn’t spending too much time on TV at the moment; it’s been years since he was the PC of […]

One book’s worth of story stretched into a trilogy of books

The Unidentified Redhead by Alice Clayton

The Redhead Revealed by Alice Clayton

The Redhead Plays Her Hand by Alice Clayton

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Grade for whole series: 3.5 stars Grace Sheridan is 33. She’s an aspiring actress who completely failed to make any kind of impression her first go-around in Hollywood. After a few years away from the limelight, when she went a bit reclusive and gained far too much weight, she’s now healthy and happy and back in Los Angeles, temporarily living with her BFF Holly, who also happens to be a very successful talent agent, while waiting for her new house to be redone. Grace isn’t really […]

Monsters and Heroes

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

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While I’ve been excited to read this book since it came out a year ago, it was only recently that I was finally able to snag a copy from my library. This is probably because of the book’s myriad awards, and because it’s good. The timing works out pretty nicely, though, as this is a great read for Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (which is tomorrow, at the time I write this). I have to admit that I didn’t fully understand the title […]



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