Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search this Site

July-August 2024 Leftovers

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

Confucius for Christians: What and Ancient Chinese Worldview Can Teach Us about Life in Christ by Greg A. Ten Elshof

Lucky At Cards by Lawrence Block

A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block

Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by Gerald Posner

Doing the Devil's Work by Bill Loehfelm

The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Leta McCullough Seletzky

The Third Bullet by Stephen Hunter

Burning Angel by James Lee Burke

The Queen City Detective Agency by Snowden Wright

Poetic Justice by Andrea J. Johnson

by Leave a Comment

Because I’ve been posting most of my reviews due to Bingo, I haven’t kept up with the leftover ones until now. Hope everyone had  a good summer. It’s my least favorite time of year but this one wasn’t so bad. Heartsick***: I took this book too seriously when I tried to read it the first time. I relaxed and enjoyed the ride the second. Goofy fun, nothing more. Brief Answers to the Big Questions****: I do enjoy listening to Hawking’s desire to push the boundaries […]

Beauty Queen

The Enchanters by James Ellroy

by Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR15Bingo: hold steady. James Ellroy is a favorite author of mine; I return to his work often. This is the second in his Freddy Otash series. And it features a “protagonist” in a lot of trouble.  I only found out less than a month ago that James Ellroy was coming out with a new book. I keep my ear close to the ground as far as Ellroy is concerned so I’m not sure why the delayed announcement here. But I put […]

I kept expecting a wizard, but all I got was Richard Nixon.

by 2 Comments

The aura that surrounds John F. Kennedy is, by itself, worthy of enough attention to warrant a book all by itself. From his familial history to his infamous relationship with women to his storied political career and untimely, traumatizing assassination, few Americans are both so well known and mysterious. I’ve stated before my intention to read a biography on every president. This goal grew out of a plan to rank every president (plus Jefferson Davis) by various criteria. I generally have that done already, but […]

Sometimes the things presented to us as choices aren’t choices at all.

by Leave a Comment

Few writers can gut punch readers with an ending the way Stephen King can. Written in the first person, 11/22/63 is ominous from the start. But why it is so ominous takes over 850 pages to understand. For all his flaws with endings, the final lines are usually cutting. Take another story told in first person, The Green Mile. It’s only at the end, the very end, that the true cost of the story is revealed with that haunting final line “We each owe a […]

Four Days in November

by Leave a Comment

San Antonio has the Alamo. Austin has the capital. Dallas has the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I grew up in a suburb of Dallas; besides the eponymous TV show, the assassination of our 35th president is our biggest claim to “fame.” I’ve visited the 6th Floor museum on a couple field trips and seen my city’s stamp on history with my own eyes. While the museum has lost its sense of wonder for me, the assassination itself still interests me. I was a bit […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo