Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Stingers

Scorpions' Dance: The President, The Spymaster, and Watergate by Jefferson Morley

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Hmmm. This is tough. I was loving the first part of this book. It was maybe my favorite non-fiction read of the year. It almost read like a thriller. It traces the early political careers of Dick Helms and Richard Nixon respectively, along with the trajectory that would lead them to Watergate and the close of their careers. Then it got to the Kennedy stuff. And I realized Jefferson Morley is a Kennedy conspiracy theorist. Not a hardcore one. He doesn’t seem to believe anything […]

Present Tense, Past Perfect

11.22.63 by Stephen King

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It’s 2011, and Jake Epping is a high school English teacher in a sleepy Maryland town when his friend Al, who runs an implausibly cheap diner on the edge of town, asks him for a big favour: go back in time and stop the Kennedy assassination. You see, Al’s diner has a somewhat unusual feature in its storeroom: a portal back to 1958. After a few furtive explorations, Jake agrees to go down the rabbit hole, find Lee Harvey Oswald, and stop him before he […]

Blonde Assassin

The Blonde by Anna Godbersen

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The fun thing about this book is that few of the individual subplots work and yet, Anna Godbersen creates such a vivid re-imagination of Marilyn Monroe as a person that I really didn’t care. Monroe is often depicted—mostly by but not limited to men (looking at you, Joyce Carol Oates)—as a wide-eyed naifish mentally damaged sex doll. I have to imagine there is more to her life than going around speaking in innuendo and substance-induced rage but rarely have I seen this depicted. Blonde is the latest […]

In the City of LA

The Empty Glass by JI Baker

A Student of History by Nina Revoyr

Friend of the Devil (Reckless #2) by Ed Brubaker

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By both design and coincidence, I read three consecutive books on Los Angeles over the last 48 hours. The first two were good 4-star reads and the third was an excellent 5-star one… The Empty Glass Oliver Stone’s Blonde. This got poor reviews and I guess I get it? I suppose it depends on what your expectations are. Me personally, I enjoyed this wild romp through Los Angeles as a low level county morgue guy tries to unravel a government conspiracy around Marilyn Monroe’s death. […]

The master at some of his best work (Belated Bingo – White Whale)

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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I’m a big fan of Stephen King. I’ve read many of the classics (Pet Sematary, The Shining, It, Misery, Salem’s Lot, Firestarter,  Needful Things) some of the zany ones (Christine and Rose Madder)  and I think my favorite, the most not-put-down-able for me, was The Stand. All that said I find him pretty uneven and sort of have to steel myself for his typical writing style. For folks that haven’t read any of his books, the way I describe it is that it is always […]

“Hard truths can drive people apart. But great art can bring them back together.”

The Editor by Steven Rowley

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I am certainly not having any trouble with reading right now. I’ve read some absolutely amazing (and some that were just meh) books since March, mostly thanks to this group and to the good folks over at One More Page Books. They deliver! But writing has been a challenge. After a full day of editorial work, I just don’t want to sit down with my laptop and write. Even when I’ve read the most amazing book and want the whole world to know about it. […]



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